The Shared Mechanisms of Youth Labour-Market Insertion. A Comparative Study of Argentina, and Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland

Introduction

The transition from education to work has become one of the key moments in which contemporary inequalities are produced and reinforced. Across countries with very different institutional settings, young people tend to enter the labour market through unstable jobs, low wages, and limited access to social protection. These early experiences shape what the literature describes as a prolonged and uncertain transition to adulthood, delaying economic autonomy and affecting life-course decisions.

This study examines youth labour-market insertion from a comparative perspective, focusing on Argentina and four European countries — Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland. These cases were selected because they represent contrasting productive structures, labour-market institutions, and welfare regimes. While the forms of employment instability differ substantially across these contexts, the study asks whether similar mechanisms underlie youth labour-market vulnerability.

The first objective is to identify and compare the dominant configurations of youth labour-market instability, with particular attention to non-standard employment. In Argentina, employment instability is closely linked to structural informality and weak labour regulation. In the European countries analysed, instability tends to emerge within formal labour markets, through temporary contracts, mini-jobs, and involuntary part-time work.

A second objective is to assess the role of education in shaping youth labour-market outcomes. Despite the strong expansion of educational attainment — and the educational advantage of young women in many countries — it remains unclear whether education still functions as an effective equaliser at early career stages.

Finally, the study focuses on gender inequalities and family formation. Building on the literature on the marriage or cohabitation premium, the analysis explores how living with a partner reshapes labour-market outcomes for young men and women, and whether household formation acts as a mechanism that reproduces gendered inequalities during the transition to adulthood.

Methodology

The analysis relies on harmonised microdata from nationally representative household surveys. For Argentina, data come from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH-INDEC, 2023). For the European countries, the study uses the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC, 2023). The sample includes employed young people aged 18 to 34, a stage of the life course commonly associated with prolonged youth.

Two key dimensions of employment stability and job quality are analysed. The first is non-standard employment, which includes informal jobs, temporary contracts, part-time and marginal employment, and selected forms of self-employment, depending on national institutional arrangements. The second is hourly earnings, measured for both wage and non-wage workers and expressed in PPP-adjusted US dollars to ensure cross-country comparability.

The empirical strategy combines descriptive analysis with regression models. Logistic regressions estimate the probability of non-standard employment, while linear regressions analyse hourly earnings. The models include age, sex, educational attainment, partnership status, and firm size. The results are interpreted as associations rather than causal effects, offering a comparative overview of youth labour-market dynamics.

Discussion

The comparative analysis reveals two dominant configurations of youth labour-market instability. In Argentina, unstable employment trajectories are primarily rooted in structural informality. A large share of young workers enter the labour market without contracts or social security coverage, reflecting the limited capacity of labour-market institutions to regulate employment relationships. In contrast, in Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland, employment instability is largely institutionalised within formal labour markets. Temporary contracts, mini-jobs, and involuntary part-time employment function as standard entry points for young workers, often providing legal employment status but limited stability.

Despite these institutional differences, several shared patterns emerge. First, non-standard employment is clearly age-related. Across all countries, it is most prevalent among the youngest workers, particularly those aged 18 to 24, and declines with age as employment trajectories begin to stabilise. This suggests that early labour-market entry is a structurally vulnerable phase, rather than a marginal or exceptional situation.

Second, education plays an ambivalent role. Higher educational attainment is consistently associated with higher hourly earnings, confirming that education remains an important resource for improving labour-market outcomes. However, education does not fully shield young people from unstable or non-standard employment. Differences in exposure to these forms of employment between secondary and tertiary graduates are often modest, especially at early stages of the working life. This indicates that the equalising potential of education is constrained when labour markets are segmented and characterised by widespread flexibility.

The German case highlights how institutional context shapes educational returns. Due to the strength of its vocational training and apprenticeship system, young people with upper-secondary vocational qualifications often experience more stable early labour-market integration than tertiary graduates. This challenges linear assumptions about education and underscores the role of institutionalised school-to-work pathways.

A further shared mechanism concerns productive structure. Across all countries analysed, employment in micro and small enterprises is associated with significant wage penalties. Even after accounting for education and contract type, young workers in smaller firms earn systematically less. This finding points to persistent labour-market segmentation and highlights the structural dimension of youth labour-market inequality.

The most striking results relate to gender and partnership formation. Across all countries, living with a partner is associated with improved labour-market outcomes for men, including lower probabilities of non-standard employment and higher hourly earnings. These patterns are consistent with the well-documented marriage or cohabitation premium for men.

For women, however, the picture is markedly different. In several countries, cohabitation is associated with greater exposure to flexible or non-standard forms of employment and with weaker, null, or even negative income effects. Household formation appears to coincide with a reallocation of labour-market roles within couples, increasing women’s exposure to less stable employment trajectories even at young ages and despite high levels of education.

Importantly, the magnitude of these gendered effects varies across countries. In Germany, Spain, and Poland, cohabitation significantly widens gender income gaps. In Italy and Argentina, the gap does not increase to the same extent. These differences suggest that labour-market institutions, family policies, and broader welfare arrangements mediate how family formation interacts with employment outcomes.

Conclusions and future research

Rather than offering a definitive conclusion, the findings of this study point toward a broader research agenda. The evidence shows that youth labour-market instability and insecurity are not confined to specific institutional settings. While its forms differ — structural informality in Argentina and institutionalised flexibilisation in Europe — its consequences converge, delaying economic autonomy and reproducing inequality during the transition to adulthood.

The results also highlight the limits of education as a stand-alone policy solution. Although education improves earnings, it does not guarantee stable employment at early career stages, nor does it prevent the re-emergence of gender inequalities once family roles enter the picture. This suggests that policies focused exclusively on educational expansion are unlikely to address youth labour-market vulnerability on their own.

Most importantly, the analysis identifies cohabitation as a key turning point in young people’s labour-market trajectories, particularly for women. However, because the data are cross-sectional, these associations cannot be interpreted causally. Partnership formation is likely endogenous to labour-market outcomes, and unobserved characteristics may influence both employment and family decisions.

Future research should therefore combine comparative perspectives with causal research designs. Recent legal reforms in Argentina and Italy that expanded legal protection for cohabiting partners offer promising quasi-experimental settings to study how institutional changes affect gendered labour-market outcomes. Extending the analysis to later stages of the life course and incorporating longitudinal data would further improve our understanding of how early employment instability translates into long-term inequality.

In this sense, the study should be seen not only as an assessment of youth labour-market insertion, but as a starting point for a broader debate on how labour markets, family institutions, and welfare regimes interact to shape inequality in contemporary societies.