Bringing Home the Bacon: Does Job Insecurity Predict Work-Family Conflict among U.S. workers?

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 17. Work and Family

Abstract

Perceived job insecurity is a prevalent work stressor, affecting almost a fifth of the U.S. workforce. Does the fear of job loss cross over to engender a sense of work-family conflict? Moreover, at the household level, who does the worrying? Due to the salience of the male breadwinner status, is job insecurity a stronger predictor of work-family conflict for men, as compared to women? Or do individuals’ contributions to the household income exert a greater influence on the relationship between job insecurity and work-family conflict? Using General Social Survey data from 2006, 2010, and 2012, we examine the association between job insecurity and work-family conflict among U.S. workers. We find that respondents with higher job insecurity indeed report greater work-to-family conflict. Job insecurity is more likely to translate into higher levels of work-to-family conflict for women, suggesting that women usually carry out the emotional work and the management of home activities. We also find the link between job insecurity and work-family conflict is magnified for middle-class women. In addition, for lower-class women, as they contribute more to the household income, the association between job insecurity and work-to-family conflict becomes magnified, while no such pattern is observed for men. Our study contributes to the existing literature, by showing that perceived job insecurity, as a prevalent contemporary work stressor, may also lead workers to feel a higher sense of conflict between the work and family domains, that this differs by both gender, and also one’s breadwinner status at the household.

Authors

• Jack Lam, University of Minnesota

• Wen Fan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

• Phyllis Moen, University of Minnesota