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Collins Business Grammar & Practice: Intermediate 
COMMENTS
On the line does mean "at risk" and I think it is a correct answer. However "thousands of jobs are on the edge" would not I think be incorrect.
"On the edge" is a colloquial expression also meaning "at the point of something important" - failure, death etc
"On edge" is nervous/nervos but "on the edge" means something else. I think it is an acceptable simile for "at risk"
Jonathan Rowley - Corporate Trainer (Prag)
Thank you for your feedback on our Quick Pick.
While I understand why you would think that "on the edge" could also be correct, I have to disagree. "On the edge" is not a true synonym for "at risk" in this sentence.
You could not use "on the edge" in our sentence, without adding more text. Most native speakers of English would find such a sentence incomplete. If I heard someone say "thousands of jobs are on the edge" I would automatically ask "on the edge of what?"
We can use "on the edge" to describe something that is about to fail, as you rightly point out. You could say, for example, that the economy is "on the edge of a recession", or that a company is "on the edge of bankruptcy" (although "on the brink of bankrupcy" (kurz vor dem Bankrott stehen) would be more common), but not that "jobs are on the edge".
If you do a Google search for "jobs are on the edge", you will get very few results. Most are taken from a sentence that continues "of the town", meaning that the jobs are on the outskirts (am Rande) of a town. This would be the more common use of "on the edge". I only found one result with the meaning of "at risk", and that was in a discussion forum.
The expression "on the edge" can also mean on the outer limits of society, as in "he's living on the edge" (ein extremes Leben führen).
I hope you find our explanation useful, even if you still disagree.
Kind regards
Deborah Capras