The association between precarious employment and stress among working aged individuals in the United States.

Abstract

Precarious employment is a plausible stressor, which may adversely affect health. We investigated the association between multidimensional precarious employment and perceived and biological stress in the U.S. We used data from waves 4 (2008-2009) and 5 (2016-2018) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Eight indicators were mapped to five dimensions of precarious employment to create a continuous score (PES, range:0-5): material rewards, working-time arrangements, stability, workers' rights, and interpersonal relationships. Perceived stress was constructed from the four-item Cohen's perceived stress score (PSS; range:0-16; wave 4). We measured biological stress in waves 4 and 5 via C-reactive protein (CRP). Given variability in CRP collection between waves, we treated wave 4 and 5 as cross-sectional. We employed adjusted linear regression models to estimate whether the PES was associated with the PSS in wave 4 (n = 11,510) and CRP in waves 4 (n = 10,343) and 5 (n = 3452). Individuals were aged 28 and 37 years on average in wave 4 and 5, respectively. Half were female and most identified as non-Hispanic (NH)-White (~73 %), followed by NH-Black (~14 %), Hispanic (~9 %) and NH-other (~4 %). Average PES was inversely related to education. The PSS averaged 8.1 (Interquartile Range [IQR] = 7.0,9.0). Average CRP was 4.4 mg/L (IQR = 0.8,5.0) in wave 4 and 3.6 mg/L (IQR = 0.8,4.2) in wave 5. The PES was associated with perceived stress (β=0.06; 95 % CI = 0.01,0.10) and CRP in wave 5 (β=0.34; 95 % CI = 0.10,0.62). Given the deleterious effects of stress on health, policies to reduce precarious employment warrant consideration.