Symposium on Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Health: Introduction

Abstract

The December 2000 issue of Economic and Labour Relations Review (Volume 11 Number 2) contained first Symposium arising from Centre for Applied Economic Research's conference on Costs of Unemployment. In that symposium, it was shown that unemployment imposed significant costs to society as a whole, as well as to specific groups within it. General social costs, as well as impact on families, those of mature age and indigenous Australians, as well as costs arising from precarious employment were considered. However, one important omission that was noted in Introduction to Symposium, although it was touched on in some of papers, was relation between unemployment and health (Kriesler and Nevile 2000). The three papers in this Symposium redress that omission. The paper by Harris and Morrow surveys evidence on impact of unemployment on health of the unemployed, their families and society generally, and provides an overwhelming argument for a strong causal link running from unemployment to ill-health. This is exacerbated by intergenerational effects on health resulting from impact of unemployment on breakdown of family and loss of parenting skills, as was also documented in McClelland (2000). Given unfortunate reality that unemployment is likely to be with us for foreseeable future, paper presents a health promotion framework to help address some of health effects. Morrell, Page and Taylor examine link between unemployment and youth suicide. They note increase in youth suicides in Australia, and in other similar Western countries, since 1960s. Looking carefully at evidence for Australia, they conclude that there is a highly significant and strong correlation between unemployment and youth suicide rates, particularly for young men. This relationship is much stronger than relation between unemployment and suicide for rest of population, and has become much more significant since 1960s. Given that future of any country lies with its youth, conclusions of this paper provide harrowing reading, and highlights urgency and immediacy of problem. After noting evidence for causal link between unemployment and ill health, Bohle, Quinlan and Mayhew extend analysis to effects of job insecurity. The importance of this is apparent when it is realised that number of workers holding insecure or contingent jobs far outnumber unemployed and that proportion of labour force in these jobs is growing substantially. …