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The negative impact of unemployment on individuals and its spillover to spouses is widely documented. However, we have a gap in our knowledge when it comes to the similar consequences of temporary employment. This is problematic, because although temporary jobs are often considered better alternatives to unemployment for endowing individuals with income and opportunities to connect to employers, they are also associated with stressors such as high levels of job insecurity and poor quality work, the effects of which might spill over to spouses. Using matched data from the British Household Panel Study, I show that temporary work is at least as detrimental as unemployment for spouses' subjective well-being, although there are differences. When experienced by husbands, temporary work, like unemployment, has a negative effect on wives' psychological well-being and life satisfaction. Yet, as opposed to unemployment, wives' temporary employment also spills over and negatively affects husbands' psychological well-being. Furthermore, coupled individuals' well-being is most affected when men are either unemployed or temporarily employed and their wives have permanent jobs, suggesting that the effect is related to gender deviation. The effects are robust after controlling for fixed individual characteristics that can influence both employment status and well-being outcomes.

We examined the differences among seventeen European countries regarding the extent to which several key institutional and labor market characteristics affect the degrees of insecurity that people feel about their jobs and employment prospects, as well as their well-being (economic security and subjective well-being). We estimate how macrostructural factors affect well-being by fitting random-intercept multi-level models and decomposing the variance across national and individual levels, using data from the 2004 and 2010 European Social Surveys. We find that there is substantial country-level variation in labor market insecurity, economic security and subjective well-being. Active labor market policies, the generosity of unemployment benefits, and collective bargaining coverage explain a considerable portion of the identified differences among countries in labor market insecurity and well-being. The effects of employment protection legislation vary depending on whether the worker has a permanent or temporary contract. We did not find substantial differences between 2004 and 2010, suggesting that the effects of institutions and worker power on labor market insecurity and well-being reflect longer-term structural changes associated with the transformation of employment relations.

We examined the differences among seventeen European countries regarding the extent to which several key institutional and labor market characteristics affect the degrees of insecurity that people feel about their jobs and employment prospects, as well as their well-being (economic security and subjective well-being). We estimate how macrostructural factors affect well-being by fitting random-intercept multi-level models and decomposing the variance across national and individual levels, using data from the 2004 and 2010 European Social Surveys. We find that there is substantial country-level variation in labor market insecurity, economic security and subjective well-being. Active labor market policies, the generosity of unemployment benefits, and collective bargaining coverage explain a considerable portion of the identified differences among countries in labor market insecurity and well-being. The effects of employment protection legislation vary depending on whether the worker has a permanent or temporary contract. We did not find substantial differences between 2004 and 2010, suggesting that the effects of institutions and worker power on labor market insecurity and well-being reflect longer-term structural changes associated with the transformation of employment relations.

Drawing on nationally representative data for British employees, the article argues for a more comprehensive concept of job insecurity, including not only job tenure insecurity but also job status insecurity, relating to anxiety about changes to valued features of the job. It shows that job status insecurity is highly prevalent in the workforce and is associated with different individual, employment and labour market characteristics than those that affect insecurity about job loss. It is also related to different organizational contexts. However, the article also shows that the existence of effective mechanisms of employee participation can reduce both types of job insecurity.

The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant of the growth of an advanced economy. This article explores the implications of direct participation for different types of employee learning, drawing upon the British Skills and Employment Surveys of 2006 and 2012. It confirms that direct participation is strongly associated with enhanced learning opportunities at work but finds important differences in the benefits of specific forms of direct participation. Moreover, direct participation was found to be particularly important for those in less favorable work contexts with respect to technological level and skill.