State of the art: Job insecurity – worrying about losing one’s job – is a common concern among workers worldwide. Since the early 1980s, the research literature in this field has been steadily growing, establishing job insecurity as a work-related stressor with detrimental outcomes for both employees and organizations. However, there are still a number of important research gaps, including how job insecurity relates to a wide range of potential outcomes, whether the strength of these associations vary between national contexts, the direction of causality between insecurity and outcomes, and how organizations may reduce job insecurity perceptions.

New perspectives/contributions: This symposium presents a comprehensive overview of the current state of job insecurity research. Specifically, the first presentation summarizes findings from a meta-analysis linking job insecurity to several work attitudes and behaviors, and different physical and mental health outcomes. The second study takes a closer look at these meta-analytic results by investigating if the negative consequences of job insecurity vary between cultural and welfare contexts. The third presentation provides an overview of longitudinal studies of the relationship between job insecurity and outcomes, also reviewing the evidence concerning temporal precedence and causality. The fourth study reports on the results of an organizational intervention in an organization undergoing restructuring, where one aim was to reduce job insecurity.

Research/practical implications: The contributions and concluding discussion aim at compiling the state of knowledge on job insecurity and its consequences, outlining directions for future research, and addressing practical implications on how to minimize job insecurity perceptions in organizations.