Institutions versus Market Forces: Explaining the Employment Insecurity of European Individuals Eight Years after the 2008 Financial Crisis

During the early stages of the 2008/9 financial crisis, we observed high levels of employment insecurity perception across Europe with much of the variation explained through the level of economic shock the European countries faced during this crisis. However, since then Europe has now somewhat recovered from this shock with lower levels of unemployment rates and the GDP growth rate, albeit low, stable. This paper examines the antecedents of employment insecurity to examine whether key individual and context factors that can explain the level of employment insecurity in 2016/17 is different our previous findings based on data from 2008/9. The results show that while most individual level factors explaining employment insecurity remain the same, with contract status, skill level and unemployment experience being the most important factors, there are major changes in the main context factors explaining cross-national variations in the levels of employment insecurity. Unlike what was found in 2008, labour market policies and employment protection regulations are important, and more important than market condition variables. Although the wealth of the country remains a powerful explanation of why workers feel more secure in some countries, this may also be linked to efforts made by the country in ensuring protection for their workers.