The evidence indicates an association between temporary employment and psychological morbidity. The health risk may depend on instability of temporary employment and the context. Confounding by occupation may have biased some of the studies. Additional research to clarify the role of employment instability, hazard accumulation, and selection is recommended.

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Objective To examine whether downsizing, the reduction of personnel in organisations, is a predictor of increased sickness absence and mortality among employees. Design Prospective cohort study over 7.5 years of employees grouped into categories on the basis of reductions of personnel in their occupation and workplace: no downsizing ( < 8% reduction), minor downsizing (8-18%), and major downsizing ( > 18%). Setting Four towns in Finland. Participants 5909 male and 16 521 female municipal employees, aged 19-62 years, who kept their jobs. Main outcome measures Annual sickness absence rate based on employers' records before and after downsizing by employment contract; all cause and cause specific mortality obtained from the national mortality register. Results Major downsizing was associated with an increase in sickness absence (P for trend < 0.001) in permanent employees but not in temporary employees. The extent of downsizing was also associated with cardiovascular deaths (P for trend < 0.01) but not with deaths from other causes. Cardiovascular mortality was 2.0 (95% confidence interval 1.0 to 3.9) times higher after major downsizing than after no downsizing. Splitting the follow up period into two halves showed a 5.1 (1.4 to 19.3) times increase in cardiovascular mortality for major downsizing during the first four years after downsizing. The corresponding hazard ratio was 1.4 (0.6 to 3.1) during the second half of follow up. Conclusion Organisational downsizing may increase sickness absence and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease in employees who keep their jobs.

Objective: To study the relation of contractual and perceived employment security to employee health. Design: Cross sectional survey. Setting: Municipal sector employees in eight Finnish towns. Participants: 5981 employees with a permanent contract and 2786 employees with a non-permanent contract (2194 fixed term contract, 682 government subsidised contract). Outcome measures: Poor self rated health, chronic disease, and psychological distress. Results: Compared with permanent employees, fixed term men and women had better self rated health (men odds ratio 0.70; 95% confidence intervals 0.50 to 0.98, women 0.70 (0.60 to 0.82) and less chronic disease (men 0.69; 0.52 to 0.91; women 0.89; 0.79 to 1.02), but women had more psychological distress (1.26; 1.09 to 1.45). The only difference between subsidised employees and permanent employees was the high level of psychological distress in women (1.35; 1.09 to 1.68). Low perceived employment security was associated with poor health across all three indicators. The association of low perceived security with psychological distress was significantly stronger in permanent employees than among fixed term and subsidised employees, indicating that perceived security is more important for mental health among employees with a permanent contract. Conclusions: Contractual security and perceived security of employment are differently associated with health. It is therefore important to distinguish between these aspects of employment security in studies of labour market status and health. Such studies will also need to control for health selection, which is unlikely to operate in the same way among permanent and non-permanent employees.

BackgroundAlmost all studies on the effect on health from unemployment have concluded that unemployment is bad for your health. However, only a few review articles have dealt with this relation in recent years, and none of them have focused on the analysis of subgroups such as age, gender, and marital status. The objective of our article is to review how unemployment relates to self-assessed health with a focus on its effect on subgroups.MethodsA search was performed in Web of Science to find articles that measured the effect on health from unemployment. The selection of articles was limited to those written in English, consisting of original data, and published in 2003 or later. Our definition of health was restricted to self-assessed health. Mortality- and morbidity-related measurements were therefore not included in our analysis. For the 41 articles included, information about health measurements, employment status definitions, other factors included in the statistical analysis, study design (including study population), and statistical method were collected with the aim of analysing the results on both the population and factor level.ResultsMost of the studies in our review showed a negative effect on health from unemployment on a population basis. Results at the factor levels were most common for gender (25 articles), age (11 articles), geographic location (8 articles), and education level (5 articles). The analysis showed that there was a health effect for gender, age, education level, household income, and geographic location. However, this effect differed between studies and no clear pattern on who benefits or suffers more among these groups could be determined. The result instead seemed to depend on the study context. The only clear patterns of association found were for socioeconomic status (manual workers suffer more), reason for unemployment (being unemployed due to health reasons is worse), and social network (a strong network is beneficial).ConclusionsUnemployment affects groups of individuals differently. We believe that a greater effort should be spent on specific groups of individuals, such as men or women, instead of the population as a whole when analysing the effect of unemployment on health.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2458-14-1310) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A high rate of sickness absenteeism increases the risk of job termination and unemployment among women in temporary public sector jobs. For permanent employees, secure employment provides protection against unemployment even in the case of high sickness absence.

Objective This study analysed interactions between job insecurity and temporary employment and health. We tested the violation hypothesis (whether permanent employment increases the health risk associated with job insecurity) and the intensification hypothesis (whether temporary employment increases the health risk associated with job insecurity) in a longitudinal setting. Previous research on this topic is scarce and based on cross-sectional data. Methods A population cohort (n¼1071) was surveyed at age 30 and age 42. Exposure to temporary employment during this 12-year period was elicited with a job-time matrix and measured as the score of 6-month periods. Exposure to job insecurity was measured according to the perceived threat of unemployment. Health at follow-up was assessed as optimal versus suboptimal self-rated health, sleep quality and mental health. In addition to sociodemographics and baseline health, the analyses were adjusted for exposure to unemployment, non-employment and self-employment during the 12-year period. Results 26% of participants had been exposed to temporary employment. The effect of job insecurity on health was the same in the exposed and unexposed groups, that is the violation hypothesis was not supported. Non-significant interactions between the exposures and all health outcomes also indicated null findings regarding the intensification hypothesis. Conclusions These findings suggest that perceived job insecurity can lead to adverse health effects in both permanent and temporary employees. Policies should aim to improve work-related well-being by reducing job insecurity. Efforts towards 'flexicurity' are important, but it is equally important to remember that a significant proportion of employees with a permanent contract experience job insecurity. BACKGROUND

Rather than between the employed and the unemployed, it seems that health inequalities prevail across different labour market groups within the employed and the unemployed. Future studies should employ a more detailed classification of employment situation.