To identify the unstable individuals of networks is of great importance for information mining and security management. Exploring a broad range of steady-state dynamical processes including biochemical dynamics, epidemic processes, birth–death processes and regulatory dynamics, we propose a new index from the microscopic perspective to measure the stability of network nodes based on the local correlation matrix. The proposed index describes the stability of each node based on the activity change of the node after its neighbor is disturbed. Simulation and comparison results show our index can identify the most unstable nodes in the network with various dynamical behaviors, which would actually create a richer way and a novel insight of exploring the problem of network controlling and optimization.