An introduction to job insecurity

Job insecurity is the subjective experience of a threat to the continuity of one’s current job situation. It is one of the most important work stressors in contemporaneous work life, negatively affecting employee health and well-being, work attitudes and behaviors. Building on key reviews and meta-analyses in the field, this entry offers a brief introduction to the topic, and presents a basic conceptual framework summarizing process factors underlying the job insecurity experience. Specifically, the antecedents, outcomes, explanatory mechanisms or mediators, and moderators that have received most empirical support are presented in a structured manner. As a result, we hope to give scholars and students a framework for understanding and examining job insecurity. In addition, we want to provide employers and policymakers with tools to recognize and counteract job insecurity, and reduce its negative effects for individual workers, teams, and the organization when job insecurity is unavoidable.