Precarious Knowledge Work? The Combined Effect of Occupational Unemployment and Flexible Employment on Job Insecurity

Journal of the Knowledge Economy volume 11, pages281–304(2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Job insecurity affects individual well-being and organisational performance. Many studies show correlation between job insecurity and flexible employment. However, whether flexible contracts inevitably contribute to precarious employment, independently of other factors, is less clear. Here, we investigate the impact of employment flexibility on job insecurity among knowledge workers, depending on the unemployment rate in their occupations. Logistic models, estimated using a large sample of workers, showed that job insecurity among temporary workers in occupations with low unemployment does not differ significantly from job insecurity among permanent workers. Occupational unemployment adversely affects only temporary knowledge workers, while permanent workers are uninfluenced.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. 1.

    The Student’s t tests for equality of means and χ2 test for independence of samples have confirmed that the differences between knowledge workers and other workers were significant for all the analysed variables in both the considered periods.

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia, Avinguda Tibidabo 39-43, 08035, Barcelona, Spain

    Aleksandra Wilczyńska & Joan Torrent-Sellens

  2. Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw, ul. Pawińskiego 5a, 02-106, Warsaw, Poland

    Dominik Batorski

Authors
  1. Aleksandra Wilczyńska
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  2. Dominik Batorski
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  3. Joan Torrent-Sellens
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aleksandra Wilczyńska.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Distribution of occupations in group of knowledge workers and other workers
Full size table
Table 5 Unemployment in occupations
Full size table

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Wilczyńska, A., Batorski, D. & Torrent-Sellens, J. Precarious Knowledge Work? The Combined Effect of Occupational Unemployment and Flexible Employment on Job Insecurity. J Knowl Econ 11, 281–304 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-018-0540-2

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Keywords

  • Job insecurity
  • Employment flexibility
  • Occupational unemployment
  • Knowledge work