Employment security and workers' moonlighting behaviour in Ghana

Purpose - This study sets out to determine the effect of employment security on moonlighting in Ghana as a means to inform policy on enforcing issues of employment security. Design/methodology/approach – The paper follows the work of Shishko and Rostker (1976) in using the GLSS6 data by applying the ordered logit estimation technique. An employment security index is created using four variables. Findings - The findings indicated that as a person with a single job becomes more secure with employment, the likelihood of moonlighting is decreased by 0.03 while increasing levels of employment security for people with two and three or more jobs, on the contrary, increases the likelihood of moonlighting by 0.0297and 0.0008 respectively. This implies that workers can be made to stick to single jobs by providing them with higher levels of employment security but once they take on two or more jobs, providing them with employment security pushes them to even want to moonlight the more. Originality/value - With current harsh economic conditions in the country and the urgent need for multiple jobs (moonlighting) as a risk coping mechanism, little has been done on the role employment security plays as a catalyst or otherwise. This paper fills the gap by employing a comprehensive index on employment security in the case of Ghana.