Job tasks and employment trajectories: The impact of the task content of the first occupation in non-standard employment on career development

In this paper, we investigate to what extent the task composition of the first occupation in non-standard employment influences further career development in the Netherlands. Using Goldthorpe’s (2007) replaceability framework and Autor et al.’s (2003) routine-biased technological change theory, we hypothesize that workers in routine occupations are most likely to be replaced by other workers, technology, and therefore are more likely to have a precarious career. Using the outcomes of sequence analysis in multinomial probit regressions, we find that it is manual tasks, rather than routine tasks, that lead to more precarious careers.