Assessing Employment Risk: New Dimensions in the Measurement of Unemployment

The contemporary era has increasingly come to be characterized as a ‘risk society’ (Beck,1992). This idea underlies a growing sense of insecurity that large segments of the population feel and experience. Much of this increased insecurity is the consequence of global economic restructuring and the retrenchment of the ‘social security state’ (Hahnel,2005; Eliott and Atkinson, 1998; and Wolman and Colamosca, 1997). The problem of growing economic risk was the subject of a recent International Labour Organization (ILO) report which concluded that economic security was out of reach for the majority of the globe’s workers creating a ‘world of anxiety and anger’(2004a). Even in the developed world neoliberal inspired policies and restructuring have enhanced economic vulnerability as the divide between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ grows (Burke, Mooers & Shields, 2000). “Work risk” is an important, if not central, facet of economic risk.