Employment security and health

Abstract

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.

The effects of unemployment and perceived job insecurity: a comparison of their association with psychological and somatic complaints, self-rated health and life satisfaction

“…Cheng and Chan 2008;De Witte 1999;Ferrie et al 2005;Levenstein et al 2001;McKee-Ryan et al 2005;Mohr and Otto 2011;Paul andMoser 2006, 2009;Rugulies et al 2006;Virtanen et al 2002). More specifically, short-term (versus longterm) unemployed individuals and secure (versus insecure) permanent workers reported less psychological complaints, less subjective complaints load, and a better health, and were more satisfied with their life.…”

“…Ferrie et al 2002;Mohren et al 2003), poorer self-rated health (Ferrie et al 2005), coronary heart disease ( Lee et al 2004), hypertension (Levenstein et al 2001), and obesity . In addition, perceived job insecurity has been found to relate to poorer psychological health and well-being, for example, psychological distress (Virtanen et al 2002) and minor psychiatric morbidity (e.g. Ferrie et al 2005;Rugulies et al 2006).…”

Common Mental Disorders in the Workforce: Recent Findings from Descriptive and Social Epidemiology

“…The mechanism of this association remains poorly understood, although it has been hypothesized to stem from poorer work conditions and environments in atypical, compared with permanent, jobs (61). Perceived job insecurity may mediate the effect of atypical work with mental health (62).…”

Informal work, unemployment and health in Brazilian metropolitan areas, 1998 and 2003

“…Studies carried out in countries such as England and Finland have placed a priority on the relationship between perceived work insecurity and health, and have identified associations with greater morbidity and worse mental health 5,6 . There are limitations with such an approach since the perception of instability may equally affect the health of individuals whether their working conditions are objectively safe or unsafe 7 .…”