Precarious Work During the Transition to Adulthood: A Latent Profile Analysis of Taiwan’s Young People

This study investigates the experiences of young individuals in precarious work using panel data collected from two waves of observations in Taiwan. Through a latent profile analysis of participants in the Taiwan Youth Study, it was found that a significant majority consistently fell into the category of lower-paid workers upon entering the workforce. Furthermore, approximately 10% of the sample were identified as the group of precarious work by the age of 30. To further explore the determinants of three distinct groups (i.e., precarious work, lower-paid work, and high achievers), several hypotheses are proposed. The results support the arguments of credential inflation, firm size, and possession of authority in managerial hierarchies. It is also observed that individuals lacking formal credentials tend to have less job security in the public sector compared to the private sector. These findings align with the perspective of political economy, suggesting that young workers in Taiwan, as seen in other contexts, encounter significant challenges and difficulties in the labor market during their transition to adulthood, despite being part of an economy characterized by rapid economic growth and a lower unemployment rate.