Job (in)stability in the european long-term care workforce

Abstract

Demographic changes and growing demand are making Long-Term Care (LTC) services for chronic patients and senior citizens a dynamic sector facing major challenges. Jobs in this sector tend to have limited attractiveness, to be associated with low retention rates and, consequently, potential workforce shortages. The objective of the present paper is to measure LTC job stability in order to quantify a potential attractiveness gap between caregiver occupations and other related careers across European countries. We make use of the European Labour Force Survey database (EU-LFS). The data covers 26 countries over the period 1992-2011. We estimate the conditional continuation probabilities of maintaining current job over time for LTC workers, applying a retention rates approach. We compare these estimates to those for typical health sector workers within and across-various countries. Our findings indicate that, although LTC jobs are as stable as other healthcare related occupations in most of Europe, two groups of countries exhibit different patterns. In Southern and Eastern European countries, LTC occupations appear less stable. Central European states, by contrast, reveal an apparently higher retention in favor of LTC occupations.