Neural network and segmented labour market

Basically labour market segmentation is described as comprising a primary and a secondary segment, differentiated mainly by job types : permanent in the primary segment, precarious in the secondary one. In France, for administrative reasons, unemployed workers may actually be involved in occasional work while remaining identified as unemployed (and receiving the corresponding benefit). This is due to the fact that the unemployed are deemed to be seeking full-time jobs and non-fixed term contracts of employment. This situation may be analysed as evidence of a special type of secondary segment of the labour market in a context of massive unemployment. In this paper, the authors investigate the effects of this situation both on the duration of unemployment and its recurrence. These questions are analysed using a Kohonen network, to classify the unemployed.