This paper shows that employability strongly moderates the effects of unemployment and of job insecurity on well-being. I develop a simple framework for employment insecurity and employability with two key features. First, it allows for the risks surrounding unemployment and employment transitions to affect well-being both directly and indirectly through their impact on expected income. Second, the framework allows for the interaction between unemployment and employability, and between job insecurity and employability. Using panel data from Australia, I provide new random effects and fixed effects estimates of the impact of unemployment and of job insecurity on life satisfaction and on mental health, in the context of a model that takes account of the interacting risks. As predicted, unemployed people with little hope of finding a job enjoy the least well-being by a considerable margin, while employed people who are both highly employable and in a secure job enjoy the most. In between there is substantial differentiation according to employability, job insecurity and their interaction. Compared to a secure job the deleterious effects of high job insecurity on well-being are comparable to the effects of unemployment. Both are substantial. The findings are used to compute estimates of the well-being trade-off between increases in job insecurity and increases in employability, relevant to the support of "flexicurity" and similar employment policies.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Kent in its series Studies in Economics with number
0918.
Length: Date of creation: Oct 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:0918
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NP Phone: +44 (0)1227 764000 Fax: +44 (0)1227 827850 Web page: http://www.ukc.ac.uk/economics/
Order Information: Email:
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Emma Robinson).
Find related papers by JEL classification: J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: