Having a bad job can be just as harmful to mental health as having no job at all, according to newly published research.
A study drawing on data from more than 7,000 people of working age in Australia suggests that the policy of getting people into work at all costs might not be best.
Generally, having a job is associated with better mental health than unemployment, so efforts have tended to focus on the risks of having no job, without necessarily looking at the type of job a person has.
But this research, published online in the BMJ's Occupational and Environmental Medicine, indicates that having a poor-quality job – for example, one which is badly paid, poorly supported or short-term – can have an impact on mental health which is equal to, or even worse than, unemployment.
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Researchers from the Australian National University in Canberra looked at data from a representative national household study, called HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia), which is conducted every year. Respondents were asked about their employment status, and their mental health was assessed using the well-known method known as MHI. The psychosocial quality of the jobs was graded according to factors such as demands and complexity, the level of control they had over what the people did and whether or not they perceived the job as secure and fairly paid. The initial results showed that those who were unemployed had poorer mental health overall, but this wasn’t the full picture. After taking account of a range of things which might affect the results, including educational attainment and marital status, the mental health of those who were unemployed was similar to, or often better than, those of people who were in poor-quality jobs. Indeed, the sharpest decline in mental health over time was experienced by those in the poorest-quality jobs, and this became even more acute the more adverse conditions there were attached to the job. Although previous research has suggested that finding a job after a period of unemployment is good for mental health, this study shows that it depends on the quality of the post – with job quality predicting mental health. The researchers acknowledge that paid work brings benefits such as a defined social role and purpose, friendships and structured time, but they say that those jobs in which the worker has little control, which are demanding and provide little reward and support, are not good for health. “Work first policies are based on the notion that any job is better than none, as work promotes economic as well as personal wellbeing,” say the report's authors, headed by Dr Peter Butterworth of the university’s Centre for Mental Health Research. “Psychosocial job quality is a pivotal factor that needs to be considered in the design and delivery of employment and welfare policy.”Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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