Abstract
AbstractRecent debates about whether the standard full-time working week (35–40 h) can be replaced by a shorter working week have received extensive attention. Using 2015 European Working Conditions Survey data, this study contributes to these debates by exploring the relationships between job quantity, job quality and employees’ mental health. Overall, we find that a job’s quality matters more than its quantity as measured in hours per week. The results show that actual working hours are hardly related to employees’ mental health but job quality, especially intrinsically meaningful work, less intensified work and having a favourable social environment, has positive effects on employee mental health, even in jobs with short working hours. Moreover, although working less than one prefers (under-employment) has negative effects, these negative effects become much smaller in size and non-significant in good quality jobs, especially in jobs with skill discretion and good job prospects. These findings develop the debates about a shorter standard working week by emphasising the continued and crucial importance of job quality in debates on the future of work. These results also suggest that policymakers should pay particular attention to job quality when addressing the dramatic reduction in total hours of employment in Europe following the COVID-19 crisis.
Highlights
In recent years, rapid technological developments and labour market changes have stimulated discussions among academics and policymakers about the sustainability and desirability of the current full-time working model (35–40 h per week) and alternative ways of organising work in the future
To what extent do effects of job quality depend on job quantity? is the impact of job quality reduced for employees working shorter hours, as they experience less exposure to those beneficial or harmful working conditions?
We first examined the relationship between job quantity and mental health controlling for a wide range of socio-demographic characteristics and non-work activities, and added the eight job quality indicators into the model to explore the relative importance of job quantity and these job quality indexes
Summary
It is well established that employment plays a pivotal role in individuals’ mental health. Jahoda’s (1982) Latent Deprivation Theory argues that paid employment could provide a number of manifest (i.e., income) and latent functions (i.e., time structure, enforced activity, social contact, collective purpose and status and identity), which are essential to people’s mental health (Jahoda, 1982); unemployed people who are deprived of these benefits tend to have much worse mental health than employees (Wood and Burchell, 2018). It is well established that employment plays a pivotal role in individuals’ mental health. Jahoda’s (1982) Latent Deprivation Theory argues that paid employment could provide a number of manifest (i.e., income) and latent functions (i.e., time structure, enforced activity, social contact, collective purpose and status and identity), which are essential to people’s mental health (Jahoda, 1982); unemployed people who are deprived of these benefits tend to have much worse mental health than employees (Wood and Burchell, 2018). Based on Jahoda’s framework, two research streams can be identified to explore how employment differentiated by job quantity and job quality affects employees’ mental health
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