Research suggests that chronic fear of losing your job is worse for your health than actually losing your job:
“Based on how participants rated their own physical and mental health, we found that people who were persistently concerned about losing their jobs reported significantly worse overall health in both studies and were more depressed in one of the studies than those who had actually lost and regained their jobs recently,” said Sarah Burgard, a sociologist at the University of Michigan.
“In fact, chronic job insecurity was a stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension in one of the groups we studied,” Burgard said.
One simple reason: the stress caused by insecurity. Other research has shown that stress can be deadly, leading to a range of poor health conditions that can shorten one’s life.
August 29th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I can see that — had an experience where I was convinced that I couldn’t lose my job, that there was no alternative to it, and then was fired (long ugly story) and felt immediate relief to be rid of it. Well, after the yelling and stomping and being mad part.
August 30th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I can understand this too. Dread is a terrible thing.