Precarious work, job stress, and health-related quality of life

Abstract

Objectives: Recent technological and work organization changes have resulted in an increased prevalence of nonstandard work arrangement types. One of the consequences has been an increased prevalence of precarious work. Our objective was to generate a scale to measure work precariousness in the United States and examine the associations between this study precariousness scale with job stress, unhealthy days, and days with activity limitations among US workers from 2002 to 2014, to determine if precarious work adversely affects worker health.

Methods: Our scale was inspired by the Employment Precariousness Scale that measures work precariousness reported by salaried workers and developed for the US workforce. We used pooled cross-sectional data from 22 representative items from the General Social Survey, Quality of Work Life survey for the years 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. These data included 4534 observations for analysis. We used regression models to examine associations between work precariousness and job stress, unhealthy days, and days with activity limitations.

Results: Statistically significant positive association existed between job stress and work precariousness. Workers reporting work precariousness were more likely to experience more days in poor physical and mental health and more days with activity limitations due to health problems.

Conclusions: The results of our study provide support for our precariousness scale and its suitability for assessing the health-related quality of life of workers in different work arrangements.

Keywords: health-related quality of life; job stress; nonstandard employment; precarious work; precariousness scale.