A bad job is harder on your mental health than unemployment
There is no doubt that the labor market has held up better than we had imagined since the financial crisis. Unemployment has not risen as much as expected and the recovery in pre-recession employment has been faster than expected, even by the most optimistic labor economists. So, is it time for decision makers to take a slap of personal satisfaction? On the surface of things, at least, it seems a miracle of work, despite the adjustment of austerity.
Unfortunately, having studied the quality of jobs held by many people in the UK, this is not quite the case. The UK labor market is working well, but we have a growing and potentially corrosive problem of poor, precarious and temporary work that threatens our productivity and competitiveness, our levels of social inclusion and, ultimately, the health of workers. Workforce
Many will argue that this casual work is essential if we want to have a flexible labor market and, of course, this has always been the case. But what about the effects of this type of work on the people who do it?
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My research has focused on the relationship between the types of occasional work of poor psychosocial quality and the mental health of the workers who perform it. And the results force us to ask, maybe here, if we are really always better at work.
Work and well-being
The quality of psychosocial work involves the degree to which jobs promote control, autonomy, challenge, variety and discretion. This affects the extent to which work improves or decreases our psychological well-being.
There is a clear link between participation in "good work" and mental health. The Australian Household, Income and Labor Dynamics (HILDA) Survey has made a significant contribution to understanding this link. It brings together a set of solid data that can easily be compared to other situations, such as unemployment. The results, published by Peter Butterworth and colleagues at the National University of Australia, have a global resonance for countries that really want to understand what it really means to "be better" at work, beyond. a limited economic definition
Worse than unemployment
Having poor quality work that may be boring, routine or underemployment or poorly matched to employee skills is widely seen as a good way for the unemployed to remain connected to the job market and maintain their work habits. But Butterworth's data contradict that. HILDA data unequivocally show that the psychosocial quality of bad jobs is worse than unemployment. Butterworth observed those who went from unemployment to employment and discovered that:
So we now have a slightly different answer to the question that the unemployed are better at work. Yes, they are, provided they have quality jobs. If they are in bad jobs, they are likely to be worse, especially in terms of their mental health.
Once again, those who think that the back-to-work policies of unemployed people should have a punitive tone should wonder if the maxim "all work is good work" is as fair as they wish. In addition, we should probably ask ourselves whether the characteristics of the revolving doors of certain policies in which many people retire shortly after finding a job may, in part, be their poor performance in the negative psychosocial quality of the work itself. even.
That should not stop us from forcing all tendons to help people find work. But this should inspire us to think much more about the impact of job quality on our health and productivity. Even in times of recession, the embarrassing truth may be that "any job" may not be a good job at all.
