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Job insecurity has been increasing over the past decade, and according to new ESRC-funded research by Dr Jane Ferrie and colleagues at University College London, there are clear signs that it is having an adverse impact on employees' health. Their analysis of changing patterns of employment status and health among white-collar workers in the British civil service between the mid-1990s and the late 1990s reveals that:
In comparison with workers whose jobs remained secure at both times, ill-health was greater among those who lost their job security and even greater among those exposed to chronic job insecurity
Prior job insecurity continued to have adverse effects on workers' health even after they regained job security
The negative impact of job insecurity on health can be largely explained by a combination of pessimism, being always on the alert, having financial difficulties, lack of support from colleagues and supervisors, lack of control at work and general job dissatisfaction.
The researchers have also examined the contribution of job insecurity to inequalities in health at the end of the 1990s. Using many different measures of health - ranging from self-assessments to measured risk factors, such as cholesterol - they find that:
There are large socio-economic inequalities for nearly every measure of health in women and men, both those in work and those no longer working. And these inequalities have tended to increase since the late 1980s. In every case, the lower a person's socio-economic position, the worse their health
Since generally speaking, the less prestigious a job, the less secure the employment, it might be thought that job insecurity might explain part of these socio-economic inequalities. But apart from mental health, where the increases in inequality have been highly significant for both men and women, job insecurity did not contribute much to inequalities in health
An alternative indicator of insecurity - expected financial security over the next ten years, a measure that is closely associated with socio-economic position - provides a better explanation. Financial insecurity contributed considerably to socio-economic inequalities in ill-health and cardiovascular risk factors, especially in non-employed people and men in paid employment. This finding implies that the specific effects of job insecurity may be less important than the more general effects of financial insecurity in determining inequalities in health.
One of the key advantages of this study over previous work in the field is that the researchers have information going back over many years. This means that they have been able to take account of people's health before their jobs became insecure.
In addition, most of the participants are, or were, white-collar office workers in the civil service. While this means that the findings may not apply to blue-collar workers, these civil servants - who range from the 'Sir Humphreys' of this world to clerks and messengers - are similar to workers in most other office settings.
The findings that inequalities in ill-health have tended to increase since the late 1980s and that financial insecurity contributes considerably to these inequalities point to the need for policies which ensure adequate financial provision for the unemployed and those who 'volunteer' to leave the workforce early in the face of retrenchment.
At the same time, policies that may lead to increases in job insecurity should clearly take account of the findings that periods of insecurity have residual effects, which are not completely reversed by removal of the threat, and that job insecurity has a chronic negative impact on health.
For further information, contact Jane Ferrie on 020 7679 5643 or mobile on 07932 569325 or email: jane@public-health.ucl.ac.uk
Or Lesley Lilley or Karen Emerton in ESRC External Relations on 01793 413119 or 413112.
NOTES TO EDITORS
The ESRC is the UK's largest funding agency for research and postgraduate training relating to social and economic issues. It has a track record of providing high-quality, relevant research to business, the public sector and government. The ESRC invests more than £46 million every year in social science research. At any time, its range of funding schemes may be supporting 2,000 researchers within academic institutes. It also funds postgraduate training within the social sciences, thereby nurturing the researchers of tomorrow. The ESRC website address is http://www.esrc.ac.uk
The research project 'The Contribution of Job Insecurity to Socio-economic Inequalities' by Jane Ferrie, Michael Marmot and colleagues was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and formed part of ESRC's Health Variations Research Programme, a five-year programme of research on the social determinants of health inequalities. Website http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/apsocsci/hvp. Dr Ferrie is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London.