Development of perceived job insecurity among young workers: a latent class growth analysis

Vulnerability profiles of workers and the relation with burnout symptoms: results from the Netherlands working conditions survey

INTRODUCTION

Unfavorable working conditions may place workers in a vulnerable position in the labour market, but studies on the clustering of these factors and their relation to burnout symptoms are lacking. This study aims to identify subgroups of workers in potentially vulnerable positions in the labour market and examine whether burnout symptoms differ across the established subgroups.

METHODS

This study utilizes cross-sectional data from 2019 of the Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (n = 55,283). Working conditions included employment contracts, working hours, multiple jobs, tenure, physical strain, autonomy, and workload. Burnout symptoms were measured with five items on a 7-point Likert scale. Latent Class Analysis was used to identify vulnerability subgroups based on working conditions and educational level. Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used to examine whether burnout symptoms differed between the identified subgroups.

RESULTS

Three out of nine subgroups (i.e., classes 4, 6, and 7) presented combinations of multiple unfavourable working conditions. The vulnerability of class 4, characterized by low educational level, physically demanding work, low autonomy, and a high workload, was underscored by a significantly higher burnout symptom score (M = 2.91;SD = 0.97) compared to all other subgroups. Subgroups 3 (M = 2.69;SD = 1.43) and 8 (M = 2.41;SD = 1.41), without striking unfavourable conditions, had the second and third highest scores on burnout symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Determining vulnerability in the labour market is not straightforward as not all profiles that presented clusters of unfavourable working conditions scored high on burnout symptoms, and vice versa. Future research should investigate whether findings are similar to other mental health outcomes.

The Construct of Job Insecurity at Multiple Levels: Implications for Its Conceptualization and Theory Development

Over the years, job insecurity has accumulated important scholarly work. As a result, research has identified multiple constructs that involve employees' concerns about job loss. Most of these are individual-level constructs (e.g., subjective and objective job insecurity), but, recently, an incipient body of literature has adopted a multilevel perspective by understanding job insecurity as a collective phenomenon (e.g., job insecurity climate, strength climate, downsizing or temporary hiring strategies). Furthermore, these constructs at different levels are underpinned by shared theoretical frameworks, such as stress theory or psychological contract theory. However, all this literature fails to present an integrative framework that contains the functional relationship for mapping job insecurity constructs across levels. Accordingly, the present study aims to examine job insecurity from a multilevel perspective, specifically by conceptualizing job insecurity at the individual level-understood as subjective and objective job insecurity-and at the organizational level, understood as job instability in an organization, job insecurity climate, and climate strength. The methodology of multilevel construct validation proposed by Chen, Mathieu and Bliese (2005) was applied; thus, (1) job insecurity were defined at each relevant level of analysis; (2) its nature and structure was specified at higher levels of analysis; (3) psychometric properties were tested across and/or at different levels of analysis; (4) the extent to which job insecurity varies between levels of analysis was estimated; and (5) the function of job insecurity was tested across different levels of analysis. The results showed significant relationships among these, and were related to an organizational antecedent (e.g., organization nature) and organizational and individual outcomes (collective and individual job satisfaction) in two European samples: Austria and Spain. Accordingly, this study exposed the multilevel validity of job insecurity constructs through an integrative framework in order to advance in the area of job insecurity theory and practice. The contributions and implications to job insecurity research and other multilevel research are discussed.

How Does Job Insecurity and Workplace Activity Limitations Relate to Rheumatic Disease Symptom Trajectories in Young Adulthood? A Longitudinal Study

OBJECTIVE

Workplace and labor market conditions are associated with the health of the working population. A longitudinal study was conducted among young adults with rheumatic disease to examine workplace activity limitations and job insecurity and their relationship with disease symptom trajectories.

METHODS

Three online surveys were administered to young adults with rheumatic disease over 27 months. Self-reported data on pain, fatigue, and disease activity were collected. Workplace activity limitations and job insecurity were measured. Group-based discrete mixture models determined pain, fatigue, and disease activity trajectory groups. Robust Poisson regression models were fitted to examine the relationship among workplace activity limitations, job insecurity, and trajectory group membership.

RESULTS

In total, 124 participants (mean ± SD age 29 ± 4.5 years) with rheumatic disease were recruited. At baseline, participants reported considerable workplace activity limitations (10.35 ± 5.8), and 36% of participants indicated experiencing job insecurity. We identified 2 latent rheumatic disease symptom trajectory groups. The first group had high persistent pain, fatigue, or disease activity; the second group had low persistent disease symptoms over time. Greater workplace activity limitations were associated with an increased relative risk (RR) of being in the high persistent severe pain (RR 1.02 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.01, 1.03]), fatigue (RR 1.02 [95% CI 1.01, 1.03]), and disease activity trajectory groups (RR 1.02 [95% CI 1.01, 1.03]). Job insecurity was associated with an increased RR of membership in the high persistent pain (RR 1.14 [95% CI 1.04, 1.25]) and disease activity trajectory groups (RR 1.11 [95% CI 1.00, 1.22]).

CONCLUSION

Workplace activity limitations and job insecurity represent working conditions that are associated with the health of young adults with rheumatic disease and should be examined as potential targets for intervention.

The rise and fall of job insecurity during a pandemic: The role of habitual coping

Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can trigger concerns about loss of employment and changes in work conditions, and thereby increase job insecurity. Yet, little is known about how perceived job insecurity subsequently unfolds over time and how individual differences in habitual coping moderate such a trajectory. Using longitudinal data from 899 US-based participants across 5 waves (March to June 2020), we investigated the trajectory of job insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic and how this trajectory depended on habitual coping strategies such as planning, reappraisal, and distraction. Results from latent growth curve analysis indicated that, on average, job insecurity initially increased and then decreased after signing of the coronavirus stimulus bill, suggesting a pattern of shock followed by adjustment. During the shock phase, habitual use of distraction was related to less increases in job insecurity. Later during the adjustment phase, decreases in job insecurity were more pronounced for individuals with higher habitual use of planning, but were not affected by reappraisal or distraction. Hence, different coping strategies appear beneficial in different phases of adjustment, and the beneficial effect of planning may take time to manifest. Altogether, our study highlights how in the context of extraordinary and uncontrollable events, coping strategies can impact the trajectory of a stressor.

Taking stock and moving forward: A textual statistics approach to synthesizing four decades of job insecurity research

We collected the abstracts of manuscripts examining job insecurity published between 1984 and 2019 and carried out a textual analysis to investigate the defining clusters, their development over time, and whether there was evidence of siloed knowledge. Results suggested that job insecurity research seems to be fragmented into disciplinary foci (organizational psychology, public health, economics, and sociology). Further analyses on the organizational psychology corpus, revealed 25 topics with distinct temporal trajectories: some were increasing (analytical advances and differentiation between cognitive and affective job insecurity) while other were decreasing (scale development). The remaining abstracts revealed 15 topics with more stable trajectories. Based on these results, we identified five areas for future organizational research on job insecurity: the changing labor market, the need to better understand the experiences of marginalized workers and non-work outcomes of job insecurity, the added-value of qualitative research, and the need to critically evaluate our assumptions as researchers. Plain Language Summary Since the paper by Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt, research on job insecurity has burgeoned. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, we collected the abstracts of all peer-reviewed manuscripts examining job insecurity published between 1984 and 2019 and carried out a textual analysis using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation and the Reinert method to investigate (a) the defining clusters of job insecurity research, (b) the development of such clusters over time, and (c) whether there was any evidence of siloed knowledge. Results suggested that indeed job insecurity research seems to be fragmented into four main disciplinary foci (organizational psychology, public health, economics, and sociology) with relatively little cross-fertilization. We conducted further analyses of the abstracts stemming from organizational research on job insecurity, revealing 25 topics with distinct temporal trajectories (e.g., “hot” topics including the increasing use of advanced analytic techniques and differentiation between cognitive and affective job insecurity) and “cold” topics including the development of job insecurity measures). The remaining abstracts revealed 15 topics with more stable research interests over time (e.g., a continued reliance on appraisal theories). Based on these results, we identified five areas for future organizational research on job insecurity based on: the changing labor market, the need to better understand the experiences of marginalized workers and non-work outcomes of job insecurity, the added-value of qualitative research, and finally the need to critically evaluate our assumptions as researchers.

Performance of the Grade of Membership Model Under a Variety of Sample Sizes, Group Size Ratios, and Differential Group Response Probabilities for Dichotomous Indicators

Social scientists are frequently interested in identifying latent subgroups within the population, based on a set of observed variables. One of the more common tools for this purpose is latent class analysis (LCA), which models a scenario involving k finite and mutually exclusive classes within the population. An alternative approach to this problem is presented by the grade of membership (GoM) model, in which individuals are assumed to have partial membership in multiple population subgroups. In this respect, it differs from the hard groupings associated with LCA. The current Monte Carlo simulation study extended on prior work on the GoM by investigating its ability to recover underlying subgroups in the population for a variety of sample sizes, latent group size ratios, and differing group response profiles. In addition, this study compared the performance of GoM with that of LCA. Results demonstrated that when the underlying process conforms to the GoM model form, the GoM approach yielded more accurate classification results than did LCA. In addition, it was found that the GoM modeling paradigm yielded accurate results for samples as small as 200, even when latent subgroups were very unequal in size. Implications for practice were discussed.

A Meta-Analysis of Job Insecurity and Employee Performance: Testing Temporal Aspects, Rating Source, Welfare Regime, and Union Density as Moderators

Previous research has shown that job insecurity is linked to a range of performance outcomes, but the number of studies exploring this relationship is still limited and the results are somewhat mixed. The first aim of this study was to meta-analytically investigate how job insecurity is related to task performance, contextual performance, counterproductive work behavior, creativity, and safety compliance. The second aim was to test two method-related factors (cross-sectional vs. longitudinal associations and self- vs. supervisor-ratings of performance) and two macro-level indicators of social protection (social welfare regime and union density) as moderators of these associations. The results show that job insecurity was generally associated with impaired employee performance. These findings were generally similar both cross-sectionally and longitudinally and irrespective of rater. Overall, the associations between job insecurity and negative performance outcomes were weaker in welfare regimes characterized by strong social protection, whereas the results concerning union density produced mixed results. A majority of the findings confirmed the negative associations between job insecurity and types of employee performance, but future research is needed to elaborate on the effects of temporal aspects, differences between ratings sources, and further indicators of social protection in different cultural settings in the context of job insecurity.