Labour market dualism and the transition from temporary to permanent jobs in the province of Bologna

In this study we are going to avail ourselves of figures regarding new employment and employment termination, registered at the Bologna Provincial Labour Center for the three year period 2004-2006, in order to calculate the duration of job placements, according to the typeof contract, and the likelihood of temporary workers being made unemployed: in order to do so, we shall utilise the survival curves method based on the Kaplan and Maier filter. Given the impossibility of estimating true transition matrices, in that the database fails to cover all outgoing events, the survival curves method at least enables us to estimate the "duration" of permanence in a given state. The utilisation of the Bologna Provincial Employment Center's records enables us to cover a sufficiently long period of time, which in turn gives us the possibility to obtain sufficiently stable estimates unaffected by contingencies. Clearly the results may not be generalized for the whole of Italy,although they nevertheless provide a meaningful insight into the situation of temporary workers (also given the healthy state of the Bologna province's labour market)