Does employability help to cope with job insecurity? An analysis of workers' well-being with Swiss panel data

Abstract

Can perceived employability mitigate the negative impacts of job insecurity on wellbeing?. We address this question using fixed-effects models on panel data from. Switzerland. To measure job insecurity, we use two subjective indicators (risk of job. loss and fear of job loss in the last year) and an objective one (having a temporary contract). We assess well-being by studying job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and mental health, and perform separate analyses for men and women. Results suggest that employability does not mitigate the impacts of job insecurity on job satisfaction. For life satisfaction, employability reduces the impacts of the risk of job loss in the last year, but only among men. Regarding mental health, employability partially offsets the impacts of the risk of job loss in the last year for both men and women. We conclude that even though employability might help, it does not shield workers from the negative impacts of job insecurity. This suggests that the flexicurity strategy falls short of mitigating the non-pecuniary impacts of job insecurity.