The Effects of Prolonged Job Insecurity on the Psychological Well-Being of Workers.

Job insecurity has been increasing since the 1980s. While researchers have found job insecurity to be negatively associated with multiple indicators of well-being for workers and their families in cross sectional studies, less is known about the long term effects of prolonged job insecurity. Specifically, there is a need to collect measures of both insecurity and its consequences at multiple time periods. The current study followed workers for 3 1/2 years to assess the effects of chronic job insecurity on psychological distress. Results indicate that while workers reported increased feelings of security over time, there were longer term negative effects on workers' depression levels. The importance of government regulations to decrease insecurity is discussed. Keywords: job insecurity, well-being, workers, psychological distress ********** As employment continues to shift in the U.S., more and more workers face uncertainty in their jobs. Almost four million U.S. workers who were previously in long tenured positions were displaced from their jobs between 1997 and 2000 (Helwig, 2004). One important reason for this shift is increasing global competition. The search for cheap labor and greater profits has resulted in the restructuring of the economy from manufacturing to service industries (Mishel, Bernstein & Allegretto, 2005). The service and retail industries accounted for 83.3% of all new jobs between 1989 and 1995. At the same time, the manufacturing industry, once considered the most stable employer in the U.S. for non-college educated workers, declined in the 1990s, losing over 2 million jobs between 1980 and 1995 (Mishel, Bernstein & Schmitt, 1997). Blue collar workers were hit hard between 2000 and 2003 as well, losing another 2.7 million jobs in just a three year period (Mishel, Bernstein & Allegretto, 2005). Job insecurity is not reserved for those workers whose employment is immediately threatened, however. Job insecurity is defined as a subjective perception of feelings of insecurity about the future of one's employment (Witt, 2005). Perceived job insecurity results when "workers come to doubt the continued existence of their jobs in the future" due to economic or organizational change (Reynolds, 2000, p.5). While job insecurity is especially relevant in the context of a corporation that is experiencing downsizing, perceived job insecurity is also experienced by workers in seemingly unthreatened job situations (Sverke & Hellgren, 2002). In a national survey in 1996, for example, 79% of respondents said that "every time" they heard about a company downsizing they worried about their own job, regardless of whether their own job was personally threatened (Andolsen, 1998). Therefore, the term "job insecurity" can be used to represent feelings associated with an actual threat to one's job, such as a lay off notice, or a more general perception by workers of job risk. Such findings are consistent with the central idea behind stress research, that the anticipation of a stressful event represents an important source of psychological distress equal to an actual event experienced (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Conceptual Framework While there is a growing body of research addressing short term job insecurity and its negative effects on workers and their families, there are many theoretical gaps in our understanding of the potential longer term consequences for workers who experience prolonged job insecurity. The current study is an attempt to address these gaps. Three important conceptual issues will be addressed in this paper. First, most studies that have examined the consequences of job insecurity have been cross-sectional, "relating job insecurity to its potential outcomes within a single data collection wave. This means that very little is known about the long term effects of job insecurity" (Sverke & Hellgren, 2002, p.33). The few longitudinal studies that have examined prolonged job insecurity have largely looked at only two points in time. …