Job insecurity: what permanent temporariness does to your sense of safety

“They’ve extended my contract for three months. Again. My boss says not to worry, I’m near the top of the list when a permanent post opens up.”

I have heard this sentence in many versions. Sometimes it is three months, sometimes a year, sometimes a project that is “definitely continuing, the paperwork just hasn’t been signed yet”. And almost always the same pause follows, and then a second, quieter sentence: “It’s not that bad, really. I have a job. Some people don’t have one at all.”

It is that second sentence that interests me. Because there is not only gratitude in it, but also a prohibition. A prohibition on finding things hard as long as nothing has actually happened. Nobody has dismissed this person. The salary arrives. And yet they have been living for three years in a state that researchers describe as one of the more draining stresses of modern working life: job insecurity, a temporariness that has become permanent.

It is not about what has happened, but about what might

Work psychology uses the term job insecurity for this — the perceived uncertainty about the future of your own employment. The Belgian psychologist Hans De Witte, who has studied it for decades, stresses something that sounds simple but has large consequences: it is about the subjective experience of a threat, not an objective fact. Two people on identical contracts can experience insecurity very differently. And someone on a permanent contract may feel it more strongly than someone on a short one, if rumours of redundancies are circulating in the company.

So with job insecurity, nothing actually happens. Only a possibility happens. And that possibility stays open for weeks, months, sometimes years. That is exactly where its weight lies: a loss that has already happened can be grieved, adapted to, started over from. A loss that hangs over you allows neither grief nor a new beginning.

You can see this clearly in one of the longest studies following the health of employees, the British Whitehall II study, which since the late 1980s has followed more than ten thousand civil servants in London. In 2002 Jane Ferrie and her colleagues showed two things. Those who experienced insecurity for longer reported poorer health and more psychological difficulties. And when the threat passed, the health of those who had earlier lost their security did not fully return to its previous level. Insecurity, in other words, does not vanish the moment you sign a new contract. It stays in the body for a while.

Can insecurity really be as hard as losing your job?

At first glance this seems exaggerated. Someone who loses their job loses their income, the rhythm of their day, their colleagues. Someone in an insecure job still has all of that. And yet research shows that the difference is not as large as you might expect.

In a 2015 systematic review, Tae Jun Kim and Olaf von dem Knesebeck compared studies that measured both — the effect of job insecurity and the effect of unemployment on health — in the same people. They found that both were associated with poorer self-rated health and more symptoms of depression, and that an insecure job was not necessarily “better for health” than no job at all. Earlier, Magnus Sverke and colleagues had shown in a meta-analysis that insecurity is linked to lower satisfaction, poorer physical and mental health and weaker commitment to the employer.

I am not writing this to frighten anyone. I am writing it because many people living in this kind of uncertainty do not take themselves seriously. After all, they have a job. They have no right to be struggling. Among other things, this post is a permission: what you feel has a name and a basis.

If you are interested in the other side — what happens when the uncertainty resolves the way you feared —, I have written about it in Losing your job: the first thirty days and what helps.

What uncertainty does to the nervous system

The brain copes better with bad news than with no news. This is not just a saying. In a 2016 study by Archy de Berker and colleagues, participants played a game in which they had to predict whether a snake was hiding under a rock — and if it was, they received an unpleasant electric stimulus. The researchers measured stress (sweating, pupil dilation, self-report). It was highest not when the stimulus was almost certain, but when it was least predictable.

In a review article, Dan Grupe and Jack Nitschke described how uncertainty itself — not danger as such — sits at the heart of anxiety. When we do not know what is coming, the nervous system stays on standby. It overestimates the likelihood of a bad outcome, scans for signs, braces for a blow that may never land. In the short term this is useful. In the long term, a body that spends months on alert pays a price: poorer sleep, muscle tension, irritability, digestive trouble.

People in insecure jobs often describe this very concretely. You read every message from your manager twice. Every meeting you are not invited to is a sign. Every colleague talking to HR is a threat. Psychology calls this hypervigilance — heightened watchfulness for signs of danger. And because that watchfulness is exhausting, people are often surprised by how tired they are, “even though I don’t actually have that much work”.

There is one more thing I notice often: night-time brooding. At night the mind replays conversations and scenarios as if it could solve them that way. I have written more about why this happens precisely at three in the morning in Waking at three: what cortisol and a racing mind are telling you.

The workplace as a system: two classes under one roof

In marriage and family therapy we look at people as parts of systems. A family is a system with roles, rules and invisible alliances. A workplace is very similar. And when a team contains two groups — the “permanent” ones and the “temporary” ones —, the system organises itself around that difference, even if nobody talks about it.

What happens in such a system?

• The temporary staff take on the role of the good child. They don’t turn down extra tasks, don’t point out mistakes, don’t take sick leave. The system quickly notices and starts loading more onto them. What began as a survival strategy becomes their role.
• The permanent staff feel guilty or threatened. Some become protective of the temporary colleagues, others keep a hidden distance — who wants to get attached to someone who may be gone in three months?
• Triangles form. The manager tells one temporary colleague something they don’t tell another. Two people competing for the same permanent post start watching each other. A colleague becomes the go-between for the manager and “the ones on contracts”. I have written about how a team splits into camps in Office coalitions.

I think it matters that you see this as a systemic pattern, not as a personal weakness. If you never dare to stand up for yourself at work, it is not necessarily because you are “that kind of person”. It may be that your position in the system makes silence a reasonable choice. It can also help to look at the role you had in your family of origin — whether you were already the one at home who had to be good in order to be accepted. More on this in Roles in the family: the hero, the scapegoat, the invisible child. Which was yours?

Living on “once it’s clear”

One of the quietest consequences of job insecurity is a postponed life. You don’t buy a flat because the bank won’t give you a mortgage. You don’t plan a child because you don’t know whether you’ll still be employed in a year. You don’t sign up for a course, don’t book a holiday, don’t invite friends to stay in two months’ time. All of it waits for the moment when “it’s clear”.

The economist Guy Standing used the term precariat for people living in lasting temporariness. He described not only contracts but also an experience: a life without a story you can carry forward, without the sense that you are building something that will last. In Slovenia we know this in several forms — successive fixed-term contracts, student work that drags on long after graduation, self-employed people who in reality work like employees, only without their rights.

This experience is not only economic. It is also developmental. Adulthood is built to a large extent on the sense that you can plan: that you can promise, commit, know where you will be in a year or two. When that is missing, people sometimes feel “left behind” — as if stuck in an in-between space between youth and adulthood. This is not a personal failure. It is a response to circumstances that genuinely make planning impossible.

How uncertainty comes home

Uncertainty does not stay at work. It comes home — into conversations over dinner, into decisions about money, into the bedroom. And because we are talking about a relational system, it affects not only the person with the insecure contract but everyone.

(composite, not a real person)
“Shall we book that apartment for August? There’s still a discount.”
“I don’t know. My contract ends in June.”
“It ended last year too, and they extended it.”
“Yes, and last year I waited for the email until the very last day. I can’t pay for something now when I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it.”
“Then we’ll never plan anything.”
“…”

Nobody is to blame in this short exchange. One is trying to hold on to a bit of normality, the other is protecting themselves from disappointment. But if a conversation like this keeps repeating, a pattern can set in for the couple: one becomes the carrier of worry, the other the carrier of hope. The first feels misunderstood (“you don’t know what it’s like”), the second rejected (“we can never look forward to anything”). Over time the balance of power can shift too — I have written about this in Money and power in a couple: when one partner earns most.

A third generation often steps in as well. Many parents who had a “job for life” ask questions that are meant kindly but hurt: “You still don’t have a permanent contract?” “Why don’t you go into the civil service?” For parents, permanent employment often meant security and adulthood. For a child living in a different labour market, such a question can mean they are not enough.

Exercise: a map of uncertainty

You cannot remove uncertainty. But you can take it apart into pieces you can pick up and pieces you have to leave. Take a sheet of paper and give yourself twenty minutes.

1. Write down what you don’t know. As concretely as possible: “I don’t know whether my contract will be extended on 30 June.” Not “I don’t know what will become of me”. Uncertainty with a date and a shape is smaller than uncertainty spilled over everything.
2. Write down what you do know. How many months you can live on your savings. Who supports you. What you can do. What experience you have that would be useful elsewhere. Anxiety likes to erase everything solid — this column corrects it.
3. Sort it into three circles. What is beyond your influence (management decisions, the budget), what you can influence (a conversation with your manager, an updated CV, checking your rights), and what you can do this week. The circle of control tool describes this kind of reflection.
4. Choose one small step from the middle circle. Not five. One you can do by Friday. A sense of agency is one of the best antidotes to helplessness.
5. Set a time for worry. Fifteen minutes a day, always at the same time, when you allow yourself to think about work. When the thought comes at another time, you write it down and set it aside until then. You’ll find the technique under worry postponement.

The exercise doesn’t resolve the uncertainty. But it moves you from a position of waiting to a position where you are holding something in your hands. And for the nervous system that is a big difference.

Talking to your manager: ask what you can ask

Many people in insecure jobs don’t dare ask about their prospects. They fear they will come across as dissatisfied or ungrateful, or that they will hear an answer they don’t want. And so the weeks pass in guesswork.

A clear, calm conversation often doesn’t bring certainty, but it does bring information. Questions you can ask without it being a demand:

• “When will the decision about the extension be made?”
• “What does it depend on?”
• “Is there anything I can do to make the decision easier?”
• “If there is no extension, when will I find out?”

The last question matters. You are not asking for a promise, but for timeliness — for the chance to prepare. That is a reasonable request in any working relationship. If talking to someone above you is hard because an old anxiety grips you, you may find Attachment at work helpful.

I don’t give legal advice and won’t do so here. If you are not sure whether the successive contracts you are signing are lawful, or what rights you have when a contract ends, turn to a trade union, the Labour Inspectorate of the Republic of Slovenia or the free legal aid service at the district court. Knowing your rights is not distrust of your employer. It is part of standing on solid ground.

Where this view falls short

I want to be honest here: not everything I have written can be solved with an exercise, a conversation or therapy.

Job insecurity is first of all a social problem. When people live for years on successive short contracts, that is not a result of their anxiety but of how the labour market is organised. Psychological tools can help insecurity eat away at you less — but they cannot replace security that isn’t there. It would be dangerous if this post convinced you that your only task is to “cope better”. Sometimes the right answer is collective: a union, a joint conversation with management, an initiative among colleagues. I have written about a similar line of thought on burnout in System or individual: who is responsible for burnout.

Sometimes a decision is better than adapting. If you have been waiting for three years for a permanent post that is promised “soon”, it makes sense to ask whether waiting is still a choice or has become a habit. Leaving is not defeat. It can also be a way of taking back control of your life.

And sometimes something older is hiding beneath the uncertainty. For some people an insecure job opens a very old wound — the experience of never knowing whether they were wanted, whether they would be allowed to stay, whether home was safe. Then the reaction is bigger than the circumstances, and that is not a mistake. It is a sign that the past has settled on top of the present. These are exactly the layers we work with most carefully in relational family therapy, in which I am training.

If you notice that the anxiety doesn’t ease even when things are clear for a while, that you haven’t slept properly for weeks, or that you are losing interest in things that used to bring you joy, talk to your GP. These are not signs of weakness, but signs that the body has been on alert for too long.

How to live while it’s still unclear

In the end I always come back to the same question: how do you live in a time that is not certain? Because the answer “wait until it’s clear” often means life waits for years.

Some things you can do now, even without certainty:

• Plan in shorter arcs. If you can’t plan a year, plan three months. A holiday you pay for once the contract is signed. A project of your own that doesn’t depend on work.
• Separate your identity from your contract. You are not “a temp”. You have a temporary contract. The difference sounds small, but it decides how you talk about yourself.
• Build things that last. Knowledge, relationships, health, friendships. These are things no contract can take away.
• Talk about it. With your partner, with friends, with colleagues in the same position. Uncertainty you carry alone is heavier than uncertainty carried by two.

If you feel you are going round in endless circles thinking about whether to stay or go, you may find Thinking isn’t solving: how to tell brooding from real decision-making useful.

What to remember

• Job insecurity is a stress even when nothing has happened yet — research links it to poorer health, much like losing a job.
• The brain finds unpredictability harder to bear than bad news, so the body stays on alert.
• At work, roles and triangles form between the “permanent” and the “temporary” — your over-adapting may be part of the system, not your weakness.
• You cannot remove uncertainty, but you can take it apart into what lies beyond your influence and what you can do this week.
• It is also a social question — for your rights, turn to a union, the labour inspectorate or free legal aid.