Working Conditions and Macroeconomic Factors: A New Measure of Job Insecurity. Time Series Evidence from the Euromed Area

The measurement of job insecurity and the identification of its determinants are key areas of interest for multidisciplinary social scientists at the intersection of organizational psychology, sociology, economics and public health (Bazzoli & Probst, 2022). In this study, we propose a new multilevel index of job insecurity, defined as the subjectively perceived threat to the continuity and stability of one’s current employment (Shoss, 2017). This composite index incorporates a range of individual, job-related and macroeconomic variables that have been empirically established as determinants of job insecurity, along with additional variables that, despite their theoretical relevance, have been understudied or remain unexplored. To construct this index, we employ a novel two-step procedure designed to obtain an efficient estimator of job insecurity. First, we apply Principal Component Analysis to aggregate the individual-level variables collected from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for the years 2004-2022. Second, we compute the weights of macroeconomic variables using a linear regression-based methodology. Our analysis focuses on old workers living in selected Euromed countries, where survey data are available across multiple years. This region is characterized by insufficient welfare support for disadvantaged employees, making job insecurity a pressing issue. Beyond assessing the extent of job insecurity in these economies, our study offers policy-makers valuable insights into effective strategies for addressing this phenomenon.