Glossary: unemployment, job insecurity, and health

Abstract

The 1990s in many developed countries saw national commitments to security of employment abandoned in favour of labour market flexibility, accompanied by large increases in part time and temporary work, self employment and fixed term contracts, as organisations in the public and private sector engaged in restructuring and downsizing. For the individual employee the corollary of labour market flexibility is job insecurity. The possible health effects of these organisational changes are becoming a lively new area of research. We therefore include some terms that are used to describe these processes.