Strategies of Flexible Accumulation and Perceived Employment Insecurity: Is There a Connection?

Abstract

Existing research on perceived employment insecurity tends to focus on perceptions of job insecurity (a worker’s perception of how vulnerable their position is with their current employer). This study examines perceived labor market insecurity (a worker’s assessment of their job prospects in the broader labor market) alongside perceived job insecurity. The author uses individual-level General Social Survey and publicly available state-level data from 1977 to 2012 to determine and identify strategies of flexible accumulation (e.g., deindustrialization, deunionization, and financialization) that may be associated with these outcomes. The findings indicate that these strategies are associated with greater levels of perceived job insecurity but are not significant for perceived labor market insecurity, which is only positively associated with unemployment at the state level. The author also finds that individual-level factors such as income and part-time status have differing effects for each outcome. In a time characterized by higher levels of employer-employee detachment, these findings have important implications for the study of employment insecurity.