Have British jobs gotten more or less secure recently?
At the beginning of 2023, we revealed that three in ten businesses believe they may have to make cost of living redundancies in 2023. But has the crisis had an effect on how British workers perceive their job security?
Our data suggests that 12% of British workers believe their jobs got less secure in the period between 23 December 2022 – 22 January 2023, with 9% saying they got more secure and 59% saying there has been no change either way.
It’s worth pointing out that this isn’t too different from the norm: looking at our entire Profiles database – updated on a rolling basis – shows that, typically, 13% of workers think their jobs got less secure over an average month, with 10% saying they got more secure.
So if businesses do make more redundancies this year, some employees could be in for a rude awakening.
Looking at fear of job loss in general, 9% of workers polled between December 23 2022 and January 22 2023 think it’s likely they’ll lose their jobs in the next year, with 57% saying it’s unlikely. Workers in some industries have a greater sense of their job security than others: among those in sales, marketing, & PR, for example, just 6% expect to be let go in the next 12 months; a similar proportion of leisure & entertainment workers feel the same (7%).
At the other end of the scale, 17% of transportation & distribution workers fear for their jobs in the next year. Financial services workers 12% are a little behind, with 12% expecting to be let go.
We will revisit this topic over the next year to see how perceptions of job security have – or haven’t – changed in response to a changing UK economy.
Methodology
YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data for is nationally representative of the general population and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. Learn more about Profiles.
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