Job Insecurity And Organizational Commitment In The Time Of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on the United States in 2020, leaving heightened disease safety measures, government shutdowns, and mass unemployment in its wake. My research aimed to investigate the extent to which service-industry workers experienced economic uncertainty during this time period, and whether or not a resulting feeling of job insecurity affected their job satisfaction or commitment to their organization. I surveyed 133 workers in a franchise wellness sector company, investigating perceived economic uncertainty as well as levels of job insecurity and organizational commitment. I found that economic uncertainty and job insecurity were strongly related. I found that economic uncertainty and organizational commitment (affective and continuance) were not strongly related. This study also investigated the extent to which job insecurity moderated the relationship between economic uncertainty and three outcome variables: affective commitment, continuance commitment, and job satisfaction. Only the moderating effect of the interaction of economic uncertainty and organizational survival insecurity yielded a significant result, such that when employees felt elevated levels of organizational survival insecurity on top of economic uncertainty, their levels of affective commitment were lower.