Financial hardship while working: A comparison of standard and non-standard workers across Europe

This study examines differences between non-standard (here: temporary employees and solo self-employed people) and standard workers (here: permanent employees) in financial hardship. It also examines whether these differences are conditional on the country context. To this aim, multilevel regression analysis was applied to European Social Survey data, covering 32 countries and the time period 2002–2018. The results show that temporary employees and the solo self-employed report more financial hardship compared to permanent employees, and that temporary employees experience more financial hardship than the solo self-employed. Both macroeconomic decline and higher levels of social protection generally enlarge the gap in financial hardship between non-standard and standard workers. Furthermore, solo self-employed persons are hit harder by macroeconomic adversity and they are not or less entitled to social benefits than temporary employees, reflected by smaller differences in financial hardship between these groups of non-standard workers. The findings are mostly in line with labor market dualization theories.