I examine the extent to which workers who lose jobs find work in alterna-
tive employment arrangements such as temporary work, part-time work, and independent
contracting rather than as conventional full-time “regular” employees. The analysis is
based on data from two sources. First, I use matched data from the Displaced Worker
Supplement (DWS) to the February 1994 Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Con-
tingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements Supplement (CAEAS) to the February
1995 DWS. Second, I use data from the seven DWS’s conducted between 1984 and 1996.
The results are clear. Using the matched DWS-CAEAS, I find that job losers are signif-
icantly more likely than non-losers to be in temporary jobs (including on-call work and
contract work). There is also some evidence from the matched data that the likelihood
of temporary employment falls with time since job loss while the likelihood of “regular”
employment increases with time since job loss. Using the combined DWS data. where
unfortunately I cannot identify workers in temporary jobs, I find that job losers are less
likely than non-losers to be either in regular jobs or self-employed subsequent to job loss.
But job losers are more likely than non-losers to be employed part-time subsequent to job
loss. The time-series pattern in the DWS data shows that the part-time alternative to
regular employment for job losers was less important in the tight labor market of the late
1980’s than in the looser labor markets of the early 1980’s and early 1990’s. There is also
evidence that the likelihood of part-time employment falls with time since job loss while
the likelihood of “regular” employment increases with time since job loss. Thus, it appears
that temporary and part-time jobs are taken by workers subsequent to job loss, but these
alternative employment arrangements are often part of a transitional process leading to
regular full-time permanent employment.