Is flexicurity good in bad times? Evidence on worker security in Europe

The aim of this paper is to assess the effect of flexicurity on different measures of workers’ perceived security during the economic crisis. According to flexicurity principles, if a country wants to increase flexibility by lowering employment protection, it should increase security by increasing expenditure on labour market policies to preserve worker wellbeing. Our empirical analysis, based on five waves of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on “Monitoring the social impact of the crisis” matched with Eurostat data on expenditure on labour market policies and OECD indicators of employment protection legislation, confirms that, even during the crisis, changes in policy mix according to flexicurity principles increase - ceteris paribus - both perceived job and employment security and the effect is usually greater on the latter. However, the adoption of the flexicurity strategy seems only partly to have higher effects on workers with initial low values of either job or employment flexicurity.