RESEARCH PAPER Job Insecurity and Well-Being: Moderation by Employability Inmaculada Silla Æ Nele De Cuyper Æ Francisco J. Gracia Æ Jose ´ M. Peiro ´ Æ Hans De Witte Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract The present study investigates the relationship between job insecurity and well- being (psychological distress and life satisfaction), and the potential role of employability in this relationship. With regard to job insecurity, we hypothesize that job insecurity may be related to poor well-being. Regarding employability, two avenues are taken. First, we argue that employability may be beneficial in much the same way that job security is. Second, we suggest that employability may mitigate likely unfavourable consequences of job insecurity for employees’ well-being. Hypotheses are tested with a sample of 639 Belgian employees from six organizations. The results suggest that job insecurity is related to poor well-being, while no such association is found for employability. Furthermore, employability moderates the relationship between job insecurity and life satisfaction, as expected. Specifically, the model accounts for 8% of the explained variance. However, this pattern of results is not replicated for psychological distress. Keywords Job insecurity Á Perceived employability Á Well-being 1 Introduction The growing number of workers who feel insecure about the future of their jobs has produced concern among researchers about likely unfavourable consequences of job I. Silla (&) CIEMAT-UVEG Research Group, Sociotechnical Research Center (CIEMAT), Gran Vı ´a de les Corts Catalanes, N° 594, 1°,1 a , Barcelona 08007, Spain e-mail: inmaculada.silla@ciemat.es N. De Cuyper Á H. De Witte Research Centre for Stress Health and Wellbeing, K.U.Leuven, Leuven, Belgium F. J. Gracia Á J. M. Peiro ´ Department of Social Psychology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain J. M. Peiro ´ IVIE, Valencia, Spain 123 J Happiness Stud DOI 10.1007/s10902-008-9119-0