Emerging from turbulent times, American undergraduates voice their concern for job security louder than students in other countries. From nine possible career goals, Universum asked 300,000 university students around the world to select their three most important goals. The need to feel secure or stable in a job is an actual career aspiration for most students. In thirteen out of 25 countries, job security was in their top three choices, whereas Swiss students don’t prioritize it in their range of career objectives.

To determine the importance-level of each career goal by country or region, however, the percentage of students that selected a given alternative were compared – Universum presents its Global Job Security Ranking.
American’s want job security the most, followed by the Canadians (no. two), Norwegians (no. three), Polish (no. four) and Japanese (no. five). Contrary to this predisposition, the Belgians (no. 25) and Dutch (no. 24) are the least worried about being unemployed, just like the French (no. 23), Portuguese (no. 22) and Swiss (no. 21).

Source: Universum Student Survey 2010

“The US is a very different recruitment market in comparison to Europe. Market conditions – depending on the supply and demand for jobs — directly affect people’s reality of job security in the US. Layoffs are common and government intervention in business affairs is typically minimal. For these reasons, American undergraduates prefer stable employers over companies that can be seen as being precarious”, commented Michal Kalinowski, Universum’s CEO.
“Over the past two years, we’ve seen job security become a major concern for students globally. Today, being able to choose your employer is a luxury in this tough economic climate. Yet, we see the concern for job security being a temporary result of the economic climate – once students see the world economy stabilize, they’ll shift focus to professional development instead of simply keeping a job. Tomorrow, they’ll be pickier with their choice of employer”, concluded, Mr. Kalinowski.

Swiss students put Work-Life-Balance on the top of their career goals. Job security is only the sixth in the row of nine possible career goals. Below, the Swiss career goals results on 7.740 student’s answers:

Universum’s question about career goals is based on Edgar Schein’s research on career anchors. Edgar Schein is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a world renowned expert on organizational theory.