Objective Vs. Subjective Job Security in France in the Context of Recession: Evidence from French Linked Employer-Employee Data

Although the French employment protection is considered to be one of the strongest among the OECD countries, the perceived job security in France appears to be low (Deloffre and Rioux, 2005). There is a negative correlation found to be between the perceived job security at the individual level and the employment protection at the macro level (Postel-Vinay and Saint-Martin, 2004). At the individual level the perceived job security is related to objective conditions of employment but employee perception of job security is mainly related to the type of contract (Cerc, 2005). The subjective job security may also depend on the nature of working environment, on the extent to which other employees perceive to have secure jobs, human resource management practices and social climate. This suggests that employees’ perception of job security is related both to the workplace and to the economic context where they are. Therefore, the contribution of this paper is to introduce the workplace as a determinant of job insecurity and to examine the relation between workplace characteristics and the perceived job insecurity. Furthermore, this paper provides an empirical contribution to the job security literature in France in two different contexts: one in a favourable economic situation 2005 and the other one post-crisis in 2011. Drawing on French cross-sectional linked employer-employee data (REPONSE 2005 and 2011), the current paper treats the question of heterogeneity and uses the correlates of job security related both to the employee and the workplace. The multilevel analyses reveal that the perception of job security is influenced by workplace unobserved characteristics.