Unsettled Employment, Reshuffled Priorities? Career Prioritization among College-Educated Workers Facing Employment Instability during COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: Millions of workers experienced job instability during the COVID-19 pandemic. A prevailing assumption is that such experiences of instability intensify economic rationality in workers' career decision-making as a matter of course. In contrast, the authors argue that pandemic-related employment instability may have "unsettled" workers' lives in ways that elevated non-financial priorities such as meaningful work. Using proportionally representative survey data (N=1628), the authors compare the priorities of US college-educated workers who were laid off or furloughed during the pandemic to those whose jobs remained stable. Counter to expectations of heightened economic rationality, job-unstable workers were not more likely than job-stable workers to emphasize job security or salary in beliefs

SUBMITTER: Cech EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10978048 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature