Short term jobs

In the report, we look at how many people that change jobs after only having been in the job for a year or less. A change of job is defined as changing which the establishment you are employed at from one month to the next. In the report we follow job shifts between all the months in the period January 2017 to September 2019. We have chosen not to include youth with at job next to school/studies and have therefore set the lower age limit to 25 years. For the same reason, persons aged 25-29 who are registered to be in education are excluded. The data only provides an opportunity to follow job changes for those who are employed.

Of those who were employed for two consecutive months, an average of around 25,000 changed jobs each month in the period 2017-2019. Among those who had been in the job one year or less before they changed job, there was more than three times the share of job changes compared to those who had been in the job for more than one year before the job change (3 per cent versus 0.8 per cent).

When we compare job changes between months, the most changes occur from December to January. There are also many who change jobs in the transition from summer to autumn. This applies to both those who had been employed for short and long period before they changed jobs. The exceptions for this pattern are employees at schools and universities where the largest share of job changes occur in relation to the change of school year and not the calendar year as in other industries. Adjusted for such seasonal variations, the proportion of job shifts remained stable in 2017 and 2018, but with a slight decline in 2019.

The fact that some jobs are, of a nature short-lasting is an important reason why those been in the job one year or less, have the largest share of the job changes. Those employed for one year or less have a greater share of jobs with temporary employment than those with longer contracts. A large share of job changes occurs in industries where activity fluctuates widely over the year. This applies to industries with fixed seasonal fluctuations that we find in parts of agriculture and fishing, but also in industries where many of the businesses are linked to tourism or Christmas shopping.

Another reason why people are registered with a job change is a result of reorganizations in larger companies. For practical reasons regarding accounting and other administrative support systems, major reorganizations will often be implemented the 1^st of January. This is probably the main reason why the transition from December to January comes out as a monthly change with the largest share of job changes, both for those who had been employed for a short and long time before they changed jobs.