Non-regular employment over the life-cycle: Worker flow analysis for Japan

Abstract Over the past few decades, Japan has seen a steady increase in non-regular employment. We use Japanese Labour Force Survey microdata to construct, for workers disaggregated by age, gender, education, and marital status, flows among different labor market statuses. Our analysis finds that the probability of finding and retaining a regular job varies substantially with education level and especially with marital status. In particular, college graduates, and within each gender, married males and never married females, are most strongly attached to regular employment.