Quality of Employment in the Service Sector: Stability and Job Compensation, 1997-2007

Contrary to a widely held opinion, the quality of French service-sector jobs, measured by compensation and stability, broadly improved between 1997 and 2007. In most services, including those making heavy use of unskilled labour, real hourly wages rose. Job stability increased in one-quarter of the service sectors and remained constant in one-half of them. However, employees who shifted from a manufacturing position to a service or temporary-work position generally suffered losses in job stability and hourly wages. In the period of study, the intensity of this adverse impact remained broadly stable for transitions from manufacturing to services, but increased substantially for transitions from manufacturing to temporary work. While the intensity of the impact has not changed identically for all employee categories, the differences are narrowing. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]