This study investigates whether the expansion of temporary employment in Japan has caused an increased perception of job insecurity among workers there. Non-regular employment, such as part-time and temporary work, has increased as a proportion of the Japanese workforce in recent years. The deregulation of temporary staffing in 2004 allowed firms to use temporary agency staffing for production line work in manufacturing. Using this legislation as a turning point and analyzing data from the Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS), which contains a question eliciting workers' beliefs about their own job insecurity, the author uses a difference-in-differences (DD) methodology to find that the expansion of temporary employment contributes significantly to a rise in perceived job insecurity among workers.
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