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Perceived job insecurity and worker health in the United States - ScienceDirect
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## Social Science & Medicine

# Perceived job insecurity and worker health in the United States ☆

Author links open overlay panelSarah A.Burgarda, Jennie E.Brandb, James S.Housec

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## Abstract

Economic recessions, the industrial shift from manufacturing toward service industries, and rising global competition have contributed to uncertainty about job security, with potential consequences for workers’ health. To address limitations of prior research on the health consequences of perceived job insecurity, we use longitudinal data from two nationally-representative samples of the United States population, and examine episodic and persistent perceived job insecurity over periods of about three years to almost a decade. Results show that persistent perceived job insecurity is a significant and substantively important predictor of poorer self-rated health in the American's Changing Lives (ACL) and Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) samples, and of depressive symptoms among ACL respondents. Job losses or unemployment episodes are associated with perceived job insecurity, but do not account for its association with health. Results are robust to controls for sociodemographic and job characteristics, negative reporting style, and earlier health and health behaviors.

## Introduction

Dramatic labor market changes have led to a rising sense that long-term relationships between employers and workers are becoming a thing of the past (Cappelli et al., 1997, Hacker, 2006). Economic recessions, the industrial shift from manufacturing toward service industries, and rising global competition have led to reductions of permanent employees through layoffs and plant closings, contributing to uncertainty about job security in recent years (Fullerton & Wallace, 2007). The consequences of perceived job insecurity have received increasing popular and scholarly attention, and a limited number of studies have shown a negative association with health across a variety of national and organizational contexts (e.g., Cheng et al., 2005, McDonough, 2000). Existing studies have some important limitations, however. Some use cross-sectional data, leaving open the question of whether insecure workers actually become less healthy, or alternatively, if unhealthy workers are more likely to report that their jobs are insecure (Sverke, Gallagher, & Hellgren, 2000). Those that use longitudinal data adjust for measures of prior health and other individual characteristics to address potential reverse causation due to health selection, and continue to find an impact of perceived insecurity on subsequent health (De Witte, 1999, Dekker and Schaufeli, 1995, Ferrie, et al., 1998, Heaney et al., 1994, Hellgren and Sverke, 2003). But these longitudinal studies generally have used only a single point-in-time measure of perceived job insecurity and have not explored job losses or unemployment as an alternative explanation for a relationship between perceived insecurity and health. Moreover, existing longitudinal studies are based on samples that may not generalize across workers in the United States, where employment contracts have become less secure and worker protections have declined in the past several decades (Price & Burgard, 2008).

Macroeconomic changes in the last several decades have generated a sense that no one is immune from instability at work (Elman and O'Rand, 2002, Schmidt, 2000) though a relatively small fraction of the U.S. labor force experiences job loss due to these changes. If perceived job insecurity is associated with health decline net of objective employment disruptions, it could represent an even wider population health threat than job loss or unemployment. A better understanding of the distribution and consequences of perceived job insecurity in the United States is needed to improve scientific understanding that can inform policy and intervention there, with potential implications for other societies as well.

## Section snippets

## How does perceived job insecurity affect health?

An individual worried about losing a job may experience stress due to anticipation about the problems associated with a job loss, mental strain associated with being in a powerless position, and ambiguity about the future (Heaney et al., 1994, Joelson and Wahlquist, 1987). Perceived job insecurity is not a socially-visible event like job loss or unemployment, but an internal experience for which there are no obvious appropriate responses and no institutionalized supports. Also, people

## Measurement and meaning of perceived job insecurity

While some studies have classified people as experiencing job insecurity if they work at a factory or organization that has announced layoffs or closure (e.g., Ferrie et al., 1995, Iversen et al., 1989, Kasl et al., 1968, Mattiasson et al., 1990), others have asked individuals in broader, population-based samples how likely they think it is that they will lose their job (e.g., Cheng et al., 2005, McDonough, 2000). The latter strategy more specifically targets “perceived” job insecurity, and is

## Prior research and limitations

There have been a few prospective studies of the association between perceived job insecurity and subsequent health, but most have relied on measurement of perceived job insecurity at a single time point (e.g., Lee, Colditz, Berkman, & Kawachi, 2004), such that we know relatively little about whether workers with more persistent exposure are likely to fare worse than their counterparts with briefer exposure. Two prospective studies have shown the poorest health outcomes for those who perceived

## Study design and hypotheses

Our study includes several innovations that build on the extant literature. We examined episodic and persistent perceived insecurity, comparing our findings across two large, nationally-representative samples of U.S. adults. These studies covered different historical periods and made it possible to examine the robustness of results over follow up periods of about three years versus almost ten years. We also examined job losses or unemployment both prior to the first measurement of perceived job

## Data

Two complementary data sources are used to examine the relationship between perceived job insecurity and health over about twenty years of recent history. The American's Changing Lives (ACL) study is a stratified, multi-stage area probability sample of non-institutionalized adults 25 years and older living in the United States in 1986, with oversampling of adults 60 and older and of African Americans (House, Lantz, & Herd, 2005). Face-to-face interviews lasting approximately 90min were

## Results

Means and standard deviations or percentages of dependent and independent variables are presented in Table 1, separately for ACL and MIDUS respondents. Variables measured differently across samples are presented on separate rows.

Table 1 shows that average self-rated health at Wave 2 is similar for ACL and MIDUS respondents at 3.6–3.8, reflecting scores close to “very good.” Average levels of depressive symptoms / negative affect fall in the lower end of the possible ranges for both ACL

## Discussion

Dramatic changes in the U.S. labor market over recent decades – rising global competition, major restructuring of firms and industrial shifts, and waves of job displacements – have weakened bonds between employers and employees and fueled perceptions of job insecurity. This study provides stronger evidence for the link between perceived insecurity and health than has been available heretofore, with measures of episodic and persistent exposure, adjustment for typically unmeasured job losses and

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Burgard and Brand were supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program. Brand was supported by the Carolina Population Center NICHD training grant. This research uses data from the Americans' Changing Lives Study, which has been supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging (PO1 AG05561 and R01 AG018418) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigators in Health Policy Research Program (030987), which have also supported House's involvement with this paper. We also use data from the Midlife in the United State Study (MIDUS), funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the National Institute on Aging, and publicly available from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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