There are many dimensions of economic insecurity, but the risk of job loss is usually seen as one of the major economic risks facing individuals. That particular risk has declined substantially.
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There is considerable evidence that American workers face lower risks of job loss in recent years than ten, twenty or thirty years earlier. I summarize some of the evidence for this claim and explain why the decline of job loss matters. My attention centers on "unwelcome" job loss: employer-initiated separations that lead to unemployment, temporary or persistent drops in earnings, and other significant costs for job losers. Since there is no fully satisfactory statistic for the incidence of job loss, I consider several measures and data sources.
Steven J. Davis is a visiting scholar at AEI and a professor of international business and economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
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