Sector Differences in Employee’s Perceived Importance of Income and Job Security: Can These be Found Across the Contexts of Countries, Cultures, and Occupations?

Most empirical research has shown that people working in the public sector perceive job security as more important than people working in the private sector, while the inverse is the case for job income. However, it is not known if these relationships hold globally while controlling for occupation and national context. We combine ISSP data from respondents in 25 countries with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and World Bank data to examine whether the previous generally accepted claims hold while taking into account workers’ occupation, as well as national, cultural, and economic conditions. We find evidence that even when taking into account all these factors, government workers place a higher value on job security than private workers, but contrary to the generally accepted claim, we find no statistically significant difference between government and private workers in their high-income motives when taking the occupation and national context into the models.