Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse wage discrimination among temporary workers in comparison to permanent workers in Italy during the last decade. Flexible jobs reflect an important change that has a wide range of consequences pertaining to social dimensions that sociologists study. The analysis focuses on the cost of partial and segmented deregulation of the Italian labour market and its impact on temporary workers' wage. Three types of analysis are proposed: via quantile decomposition it is shown that the differences between the two groups' observable characteristics do not explain the wage differential in the lowest part of the wage distribution, where it can be stated that there is discrimination against temporary workers; secondly, the risk of low income assessed via event history analysis shows that there is a greater probability of low income among temporary workers and, finally, that there is a higher probability of having an episode of downward wage mobility for the same group. Temporary jobs, which are widespread among the youngest cohorts of Italian workers, could become a smoking gun for the future generations of adults if this discrimination persists.