Perception of Job Instability in Europe

Abstract

The study explores the empirical determination of perceived job instability in European labour markets. The study is based on the large-scale survey from the year 1998 covering the 15 member states of the European Union and Norway. There are evidently large differences in the amount of perceived job instability from country to country. The lowest level of perceived job instabity is in Denmark (9%). In contrast, the highest level of perceived job instability is in Spain (63%). The results show that perceived job instability increases with age. Educational level, on the other hand, does not correlate strongly with the perception of job instability. There are no differences in the perceptions of job instability between males and females. An occurrence of unemployment during the past five years yields a substantial rise in the perception of job instability. The empirical finding that unemployment history strongly matters for the perception of job instability is consistent with the notion that an unemployment episode provides otherwise private information about unobservable productivity of an employee. The most striking result is that a temporary contract as such does not yield an additional increase to the perception of job instability at the individual level of the economy. However, the perception of job instability is more common within manufacturing industries. In addition, the perception of job instability by employees increases according to the size of the firm. There are also strong country effects. 4 TIIVISTELMÄ

Youth emancipation and perceived job insecurity of parents and children

“…As in other data sets (Böckerman, 2004), in our sample the correlation between perceived job insecurity and the unemployment rate is far from perfect, 0.53 for young workers and 0.58 for older ones, while for temporary employment as a share of all employees the correlation 11 coefficients are, respectively, 0.50 and 0.30. This leaves scope for perceived and objective measures to play separate roles.…”

“…However, personal characteristics explain only a small part of sample variation in expectations. Green International comparisons are provided by Böckerman's (2004) analysis of the question "Do you worry about the security of your present work?" in a 1998 survey covering 15 European countries.…”

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

“…Our results are in line with Fullerton/Wallace (2007) and Böckerman (2004), who also find that perceived job insecurity is negatively related to education. job loss, due to substantially higher unemployment rates in East Germany.…”

Subjective insecurity and the role of institutions

“…Earlier studies have examined the influence of institutions on job insecurity mainly through aggregate data at the national level (Böckerman, 2004;OECD, 2004;Pacelli et al, 2008). These mostly bivariate analyses do not take into account the different composition of populations across countries, which can be an important factor in explaining crossnational variance (Chung and van Oorschot, 2011).…”