Don’t Worry, be Flexible? Job Satisfaction among Flexible Workers

Abstract

This paper investigates whether workers in flexible employment relationships show lower job satisfaction than workers with permanent job contracts. Our results indicate that looking only at formal job security provided by the contract type may lead to misleading conclusions about job satisfaction. Using longitudinal data for Germany, we find that it is not the formal job security provided by the contractual agreement but rather the perceived job security that matters for job satisfaction. Moreover, there is evidence that workers value job characteristics in similar ways across fundamentally different types of job contracts.