What Employees Want: Job Security and Wage Satisfaction in India

Abstract

Employer-employee relationships and employment packages depend on the choice of an optimal bundle as provided to the worker. They are subject to various parameters - often to the worker’s content or contrarily to her/his gross dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, these packages are not only foundational to economies and living standards but also for skill development, sectoral and regional labour supply. They even govern the fundamental nature of multiple service-based industries. By answering the following research question, What is the relationship between perceived job security and wage satisfaction?, the research paper seeks to analyse the relationship between perceived job security and wage satisfaction from an employee perspective. The research paper focuses on the Indian labour market and uses the WageIndicator 2017 Salary Survey dataset.

The research paper further analyses the relationship between the variables perceived job security and wage satisfaction through the lenses of age, gender and occupational hierarchy. By considering an employee perspective, the research helps interpret workers’ individual choices based on their rational and collective understandings. So far, literature in the field covers theories that describe the relationship between wages and job security. The theories covered are the positive association theory, the bargaining theory and the compensating wage differentials theory. None of the theories, however, focus on the variable of wage satisfaction. Furthermore, literature concerning the Indian context is sparse.

The analysis reveals that an employee worries less about job security if she/he is satisfied with the wages, hinting at the importance of wages over job security in individual worker choices. And, with an increase in position in the occupational hierarchy, the time spent worrying about job security decreases. Female workers tend to worry about their job security compared to male counterparts owing to the social stigma around female labour force participation. Furthermore, it was found that people in the age bracket 31-40 worry the most about their job security, and those in the 51-60 age bracket worry the least. It is concluded that employment packages should maximise or arrive upon an optimal bundle of either wages or job security based on the individual employee’s productivity, without disregarding the ‘soft’ capital or experiences that these people retain in their specific industries.