Better an insecure job than no job at all? Unemployment, job insecurity and subjective wellbeing

We analyze the impact of a person’s current employment status and expectations about his or her future labor market status on life satisfaction, using long -run panel data for Germany. Our findings suggest that future expectations (measured by perceived job security for the employed and chances to find a new job for the unemployed) are at least as important for a person ’s subjective well-being as his or her current employment status. This implies that an unemployed person who thinks it will be easy to find a new job might be happier than if he had an insecure job. There might be circum¬stances under which having no job is less harmful for subjective well-being than being employed in an insecure one.