Perceived long-term job insecurity puts pressure on older workers

ANN ARBOR'The long-term threat of getting a pink slip is giving some older workers the blues. Employees believing for multiple decades that they will lose their jobs leads to heightened levels of fear and distress, a new University of Michigan study suggests. Unlike previous studies that tracked workers for only a few years, U-M researchers followed the same people for 25 years. "Our data give us the unique opportunity to examine to observe how the persistence of job insecurity is related to greater psychological distress in later life," said Sarah Burgard, an associate professor of sociology and research associate professor at the Institute for Social Research. Burgard, the study's lead author, and researcher Sarah Seelye said persistent job insecurity that extends over a 25-year career'and the chronic employment stress associated with it'is a reality for many Americans. Researchers used data from the Americans' Changing Lives study, in which nearly 435 people completed five surveys from 1989 to 2011 about how they felt during the past week and any concerns about job security. Respondents were ed before and after the Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009) to capture their perceptions of their job standing in the wake of that massive downturn.