Worker's Willingness to Accept Contingent Employment

The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion of workers' willingness to accept contingent employment. Contingent jobs are defined broadly as jobs that will not last indefinitely. Given the opposing views of these employment arrangements on one hand, it is argued that they benefit workers by giving them greater flexibility, and on the other hand, it is argued that they hurt workers by subjecting them to greater insecurity and provide fewer job benefits-it seems likely that contingent arrangements are beneficial for some workers but not for others. The relevant questions, then, are which workers are helped, and which are hurt, by contingent employment? One way to investigate this is to compare workers who willingly accept contingent jobs with those who hold such jobs but would prefer permanent employment. If the two groups of workers are found to differ significantly in their personal and job characteristics, then there may be some basis for economic policies to assist workers who would like to move out of contingent jobs into permanent jobs. We are able to explore this issue of workers' willingness to accept contingent employment using data from the February 1995 Contingent Worker Supplement to the Current Population Survey.