Perceived Job Insecurity, Unemployment Risk and International Trade – A Micro-Level Analysis of Employees in German Service Industries

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science. Terms of use: Documents inThe decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly. AbstractThe present paper investigates the impact of international trade on individual labour market outcomes in the German service sector for the period 1995-2006. Combining micro-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and industry-level trade data from input-output tables, we examine the impacts of international trade on (1) the individually reported fear of job loss and (2) job-to-unemployment transitions. We therefore apply both a "subjective" and a more "objective" measure of job insecurity.Our results indicate that international trade does indeed affect labour market outcomes in German service industries. Employees in trading service sectors face both a higher subjective and objective unemployment risk, regardless of their skill level. Moreover, growth in real net exports is positively correlated with perceived job insecurity and individual unemployment risk.JEL codes: F16, C23, J63

Unemployed in Germany: Factors Influencing the Risk of Losing the Job

“…Wilke (2004) found out that on the one hand education has a high impact on a lower risk of unemployment especially for men, on the other hand he found only very small variation for women. Regarding personal characteristics, Lurweg (2010) observed in her analysis that an increase in education lowers the chance of getting unemployed. The results of Lauer (2003) Lurweg (2010) discovered a higher risk of unemployment for East German households compared to West German households.…”

“…Lauer (2003) analysed the influence of education on the risk of getting unemployed and reemployed in a cross-national study with a discrete time competing risks hazard rate model based on the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study for Germany and the Emploi survey for France. Lurweg (2010) used a pooled logistic regression to analyse amongst others the impact of international trade on the risk of getting unemployed. A more recent article on this topic is from Wichert and Wilke (2012).…”

“…Some of the papers mentioned above include regional information in their analysis as, for example, Fieldhouse (1996) who used geographical factors concerning different British regions or Thapa (2004) whose analysis contains Australian regions. However, none of the papers above that analyse the unemployment risk in Germany include regional or spatial information apart from differentiating between the old West German states and the newly formed German states, see Reinberg and Hummel (2002, 2005 or Lurweg (2010). In addition, often only data of the Old Länder is used for analysing the risk of unemployment in Germany, see for instance Wilke (2004), Lauer (2003) or Wichert and Wilke (2012).…”

Outsourcing, Occupational Restructuring, and Employee Well-Being: Is There a Silver Lining?

“…Second, the decision to outsource could imply further actions of a similar sort; thus, recent outsourcing may increase uncertainty regarding the future. Previous evidence has related offshoring and other measures of globalization to job-loss fears (e.g., Geishecker, Riedl, and Frijters 2012;Lurweg 2010;Scheve and Slaughter 2004). These effects have also been found in other Nordic countries; in fact, Munch (2010) reports that offshoring increases the unemployment risk of low-skilled workers in the Danish manufacturing sector.…”

“…13 It is notable that the estimates in Panel A of Table 2 do not reveal a significant impact of outsourcing on perceived uncertainty in the Finnish context. Previous evidence has related offshoring and other measures of globalization to job-loss fears (e.g., Scheve and Slaughter 2004;Geishecker et al 2011;Lurweg 2010). There is also some evidence for these effects from other Nordic countries.…”