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Job security is typically defined as an employee’s perception that their job, or an important feature of their job, is secure. In most research this is measured through employee’s own perceptions, referred to as subjective job security, although there are examples in the literature to measure “objective” job security through redundancy rates, industry contraction rates, or by identifying employees in organizations where downsizing or closure programs have been announced. Measures of job security are available in many large international surveys and usually ask about the likelihood of job loss in a reference time period (say, the next 6 months or 1 year) or ask to what extent respondents are concerned about or worry about losing their job; these are referred to as cognitive and affective measures, respectively.
Guy Standing has suggested a typology of insecurity. He distinguishes between the following types of...
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References
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Burchell, B. (2014). Job Security. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_1569
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