Excess weight is associated with adverse health and economic disadvantage. Observational studies suggest that people with obesity are less likely to be employed and have lower income, potentially from workplace discrimination. This study examined whether weight loss achieved through a structured, dietitian-supported program improved financial outcomes. An employment questionnaire was embedded within a clinical trial conducted between 2015 and 2019, investigating the effect of dietary supplements on metabolic health in otherwise healthy adults with prediabetes and body mass index (BMI) of ≥ 25 kg/m2 (Registration Number ACTRN12614001302640). All participants received dietitian-led counselling for weight loss over 6 months, followed by 6 months of maintenance. Data relating to income and workplace experiences were collected at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. Analyses were completed to identify any relationship between income and weight or BMI over time. The questionnaire was completed by 281 participants (64% female, age 54.7 ± 9.8 years, BMI 34.5 ± 6.1 kg/m2). At baseline, 120 females and 83 males reported employment. Modest weight loss over 12 months (-3.3 ± 5.6 kg in females and -3.1 ± 5.6 kg in males) did not improve income or employment outcomes in adults with prediabetes and overweight or obesity. There were clear sex disparities in income; weight loss did not alter these patterns. Participants with BMI ≥ 35 kg/m2 were more likely to report being treated with less courtesy or respect at work. Findings suggest that economic disadvantages linked to obesity may not be easily reversed through short-term lifestyle interventions, highlighting the need for broader structural and societal approaches.

South Africa has faced consistently elevated unemployment levels despite numerous macroeconomic reforms, prompting worries regarding the effectiveness of key economic indicators in promoting labour absorption. This study analyses the influence of economic growth (GDP), inflation (CPI), and foreign direct investment (FDI) on unemployment in South Africa, employing quarterly data from the first quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2023. The analysis utilises a quantitative design, implementing the Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test, the Johansen cointegration method, and a Vector Error Correction Model to evaluate the long- and short-term dynamics among the variables. The findings indicate that all variables are integrated of order one and possess a long-term equilibrium connection. Long-term estimates demonstrate substantial negative correlations, suggesting that increased GDP, CPI, and FDI are associated with a decrease in unemployment over time. In the near term, GDP elevates unemployment, indicating the prevalence of capital-intensive growth, whereas FDI persistently reduces unemployment and CPI remains negligible. These findings underscore the structural characteristics of unemployment in South Africa and the constraints of macroeconomic factors in facilitating short-term labour absorption. The report emphasises the significance of policies that promote labour-absorbing growth, improve the investment environment, and prioritise skills development to tackle ongoing unemployment.The report advocates for prioritising labour-intensive growth methods, enhancing the investment environment, and fortifying skills development systems to improve employment outcomes. These initiatives are essential for tackling persistent unemployment and fostering inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

Using a human resource (HR) attributions lens, we uncover 16 attributions that employees make about the reasons why their organization provides wellness programs. We also examine the implications of such attributions for employee outcomes (i.e., psychological strain, job burnout, job satisfaction). Recognizing employees can hold multiple HR attributions at the same time, an employee-centered approach was used. Through latent profile analysis with a sample of 517 Australian employees, four wellness program attribution profiles emerged: indifferent, favorable, unfavorable and ambivalent. Overall, employees with a favorable profile of wellness program attributions experienced better health and well-being outcomes compared to those with an unfavorable profile. In addition, employees in the unfavorable profile were found to have higher psychological strain, higher job burnout, and lower job satisfaction compared with their indifferent counterparts. Furthermore, employees with a profile of unfavorable attributions had higher psychological strain and lower job satisfaction compared to those with more mixed views about their wellness program. Past participation was unrelated to employee outcomes, but past participation predicted profile membership, suggesting that it is the attributions employees hold about their wellness programs that matter more than actual usage. Overall, we advance our understanding of HR attributions within the specific context of wellness programs and offer novel insights into a far greater number of attributions than previously studied for any HR practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs) experience above-general-population levels of unemployment. Vocational rehabilitation (VR) is a central component of integrated SUD treatment, but the nature of effective interventions is not well synthesized. This overview tries to synthesize systematic review evidence regarding the nature of effective VR interventions in individuals with SUDs in all stages of recovery. We will conduct systematic searches in Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EBSCOhost, Embase, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and PubMed for English-language peer-reviewed literature systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and literature reviews between 2018 and 2025. The timeframe was selected to identify the newest developments in combined VR and SUD treatment. Search strategy, created following PRESS guidelines, will be done using MeSH terms and keywords in SUDs and VR. Study selection will follow PRISMA, with screening and deduplication in Covidence and EndNote. Overlap between the primary studies will be established via citation matrices and the corrected covered area (CCA) approach. Methodology quality in the included reviews will be measured using AMSTAR-2 and certainty of the scoping evidence via PRISMA-ScR. The primary outcome will be the determination of the key characteristics (e.g., components, delivery modalities) of effective VR interventions. This review will synthesize and consolidate key effective practices in terms of intervention components (e.g., skill-building workshops, psychological support, and contingency management) and delivery formats (e.g., in-person, telehealth, integrated care models). By building this overall framework, the findings will guide practitioners directly as to how to develop evidence-based VR programs and instruct policymakers as to how to allocate funds to the most effective VR models. The summary will also highlight important evidence gaps and recommend areas of future research to improve employment outcomes and support long-term recovery for individuals with SUDs.

Reading comprehension is critical for workplace success but rarely assessed in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This preliminary study examined the prevalence of reading impairments in adults with TBI and explored associations between reading difficulties, cognitive-linguistic abilities, and employment outcomes to inform speech-language pathology and rehabilitation assessment practices. We conducted a retrospective chart review of 44 adults with TBI (Mage = 38 years; 64% moderate-to-severe injury) who completed neuropsychological evaluation at an outpatient brain injury rehabilitation clinic. Reading comprehension was assessed using the Woodcock-Johnson IV Passage Comprehension test, with impairment defined as scores ≥ 1.33 SDs below the normative mean. Associations were examined between reading performance, Wechsler cognitive indices, and employment status. Reading comprehension impairment was identified in 25% of participants. Among those with reading impairment and available employment data (n = 8), all were unemployed or receiving disability benefits, compared to 52% (11/21) of those without reading impairment. Verbal comprehension demonstrated the strongest association with reading performance (r = .84, p < .001), whereas declarative memory, working memory, and perceptual reasoning showed moderate correlations (rs = .54-.66, all ps < .001). Reading impairments were more prevalent in moderate-to-severe TBI (32%) compared to mild TBI (13%). This preliminary analysis suggests reading comprehension may be an underassessed barrier to employment following TBI. The strong association with verbal comprehension indicates that language assessments routinely administered by speech-language pathologists may serve as screening tools for reading-related employment risk. Findings support incorporating reading assessment into cognitive-communication evaluations when vocational outcomes are rehabilitation priorities, although larger prospective studies are needed to establish causality and generalizability as well as to evaluate rehabilitative approaches.

ABSTRACT Drawing on Social Cognitive Career Theory, this article explores how higher education supports or hinders career development through the reflections of graduates with disabilities from Israel, Italy, and Spain. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological design, based on in-depth interviews with 45 university graduates, to capture how participants make meaning of their academic experiences, institutional supports and barriers, and transitions into employment. Data were analysed combining inductive thematic analysis with a theory-informed framework to interpret patterns related to skills development, goals, contextual supports, and career outcomes. The findings show that while higher education plays a central role in fostering personal skills, graduates often encounter a gap between academic learning and workplace demands and receive limited institutional support during the transition to employment. Although accommodations often enable degree completion, they are less consistently linked to career guidance, work-based learning, or post-graduation support. By foregrounding graduates lived experiences across three national contexts, the study reconceptualises career development as a formative process embedded throughout the academic journey, shifting responsibility from individual adaptation to institutional accountability for equitable employment outcomes. It amplifies students’ articulated needs and offers practical, evidence-informed recommendations for strengthening inclusive career support in higher education and across the transition to employment.

For the United States or any county's Prosthetic and Orthotic profession, early to mid-career attrition and employment outcomes have not been published. The primary objective of this study was to present a cross-sectional perspective of employment outcomes for a cohort of graduates from a single P&O graduate level training program 5 to 20 years postgraduation. The secondary objective was to calculate early to mid-career attrition rate. A tertiary objective was to measure time from graduation to certification and, for those who became certified and left clinical practice, measure the time before transitioning to other employment. This was an observational, cross-sectional cohort study design. Graduates' careers were traced 5 to 20 years postgraduation, and on May 1, 2024, the employment status of the cohort was identified. Data on certification type, additional education, time from graduation to certification, and for some, to departure from clinical practice were calculated. Attrition was measured over a 16-year period. Ninety percent of graduates attained national certification. Five to 20 years postgraduation, 69% remained in clinical practice, 11% remained in the P&O profession in nonclinical roles, and 20% percent were not in P&O. Clinical practitioner timespan (CPT), the time from initiation in clinical practice until employment change, was an average 5.5 years. The early to mid-career annual attrition rate for this cohort of P&O graduates was 2.66%. Attrition within the US P&O profession is real, warrants further exploration and remediation. The metric of clinical practitioner timespan was introduced.

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of a subject designed to facilitate professional identity transformation on both job-ready skill development and employability. It examines the direct and indirect impact of components of professional identity and skills taught in the subject on three key employability outcomes: clarity about career, the ability to secure a preferred job and performance in job. One-hundred alumni (71% male, 90% engineering) of an Australian university responded to a survey 0.5–6.0 years after graduation. Identity change predicted all three employability outcomes, while skills usage predicted only performance in job. Identity change alone explained over half the variance in performance in job, and over 67% of the variance together with skills. Skills usage mediated the relationship between identity change and performance in job. The results indicate that identity change is key to student skill acquisition and employability. They also highlight the critical importance of motivation in professional skills development and explain why students often resist learning skills. The need for identity change, or another equivalent motivator, directly confronts both the assumption of many programmes that it is sufficient to teach requisite behaviours to students and the assumption of prior research that educators should focus on identity formation.

Economic abuse is a form of intimate partner violence in adult relationships and includes financial exploitation, financial control, and employment sabotage of an intimate partner. Semistructured interviews with youth-serving practitioners and focus groups with adolescents explored how economic abuse might appear within adolescent relationships. The study team reviewed recordings and notes from these listening sessions with practitioners and youth. Three themes of economic adolescent relationship abuse (ARA) emerged: academic and career interference, conflict and stress around financial decision-making, and gift-giving and reciprocity. Youth and youth-serving practitioners identified several aspects of economic abuse specific to adolescents that should be measured in future survey development. Future work should examine the impact that economic ARA can have on adolescent financial, employment, and educational outcomes.

IntroductionMultiple sclerosis (MS) is a common central nervous system disease among young adults worldwide and Finland is one of the high-risk MS regions in Europe. Fatigue affects around 80% of individuals with MS, with prevalence rising to 95% as the disease progresses. Fatigue significantly limits daily activities and is associated with poorer employment outcomes and reduced quality of life. The objective of this qualitative study is to explore the lived experiences of individuals with MS and conceptions of MS-related fatigue among physiotherapists.Methods and analysisThis qualitative study is part of a larger research project entitled ‘Building conceptualisation and understanding of momentary fatigue and activity-related fatigability in daily life for people with multiple sclerosis’ (EMA-FAMS), consisting of several studies conducted from 2024 to 2028. For this qualitative study, 10 individuals with relapsing-remitting MS will be interviewed using a phenomenological approach to collect their lived experiences of fatigue. Additionally, 15 physiotherapists with experience in MS rehabilitation will be interviewed using a phenomenographic approach to explore their conceptions of MS-related fatigue. All interviews will be conducted remotely during 2025–2026. Interview data will be analysed in two phases using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and phenomenographic analysis methods.Ethics and disseminationThe EMA-FAMS study project has obtained ethical approval from the Regional Medical Research Ethics Committee of the Helsinki University Hospital District (HUS/10011/2024), and all the participants will provide written consent. Findings of this study will be shared through peer-reviewed articles, at academic conferences and with public healthcare and healthcare professionals.

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions increasingly turn to work-integrated learning (WIL) programs to drive practice-based learning and employability outcomes. Explorations of good practice in WIL offer strong understanding of WIL pedagogy, curriculum and operations that support success. Recent comprehensive WIL quality frameworks propose features of WIL programs that drive quality, but it is unclear whether they outline sufficient guidance for new WIL program design and implementation. This dual case study explores highly successful WIL programs in Canada and Australia at the time they launched a second WIL program to examine the lived experience of developing quality WIL programs relative to comprehensive WIL quality frameworks. This insider research is based on interview and reflective data. Findings affirm the importance of WIL pedagogy, curriculum, infrastructure, and systems to support high-quality WIL, key components of existing quality frameworks. However, some aspects – internal collaboration, senior leadership support, and the role of government – are not sufficiently elaborated in extant WIL quality frameworks. Findings suggest that raising awareness about the benefits of WIL, fostering collaboration with non-WIL staff, and nurturing relationships with senior leaders in universities are critical to sustaining high-quality WIL programs over time. Further, governments play a critical role in supporting high-quality WIL by signaling WIL as a priority for higher education practice and funding WIL programs. Thus, nurturing internal relationships and navigating priorities and funding in external environments are critical for maintaining high-quality WIL programs.

Employment Stability for People with Traumatic Brain Injury Predicted by Vocational Rehabilitation, Rurality, and Transportation Independence.

Given the growing demand for orthotist/prosthetists (O&Ps), it is important that graduates are employed in their chosen profession. Although graduate outcome data are routinely collected using Federal Government's Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS), data for O&Ps are only publicly available in an aggregated form with other health professions. The aim of this study was to explore the utility of GOS data to describe the demographics and short-term employment outcomes of Australian O&P graduates from 2016 to 2023. Graduate outcomes survey data were analyzed from 2016 to 2023. Demographic and short-term employment outcomes were reported using descriptive statistics. Variation in employment outcomes were explored using multivariate regression. Graduate outcomes survey data were available for 140 O&P graduates. Graduates were typically young (median 23 years), female (69%), and from medium-high socioeconomic background (87%). Proportionate employment increased over the time series to 90% in 2023. In 2023, the full-time median salary was AUD $70,000 p/annum, and variation was not explained by demographic factors. Most graduates moved interstate to a metropolitan location. The GOS provides high-level data describing the demographic and employment outcomes of O&P graduates. There are opportunities for universities, professional associations, and government agencies to collaboratively address some of the most pressing challenges affecting the O&P workforce, such as greater participation among Indigenous Australians or people living with a disability, to help create a pipeline of graduates that better reflects the Australian population. The benefits of richer data should be weighed against the time, cost, and expertise required to develop, administer, and analyze a profession-specific survey.

Purpose This study examines how employees’ perceptions of their organisation’s environmental sustainability relate to their well-being and performance. This study aims to clarify these relationships by investigating the role of individual differences within the interconnected networks linking sustainability, well-being, performance, person–organisation fit (P–O fit), self-determination and environmental attitudes and behaviours. Design/methodology/approach Australian employees completed a two-wave online survey (Time 1: n = 628; Time 2: n = 493). Network analysis was used to examine the associations between perceived organisational sustainability and a range of individual factors and outcomes, allowing for the assessment of stability in the network structure over time. Findings Across both timepoints, strong and stable positive associations were found between perceived sustainability, well-being, performance and P–O fit. Self-determination was also strongly linked to well-being and performance. P–O fit emerged as a central component within the network, emphasising its role in supporting positive employee outcomes in sustainable workplaces. No significant structural or global strength differences were observed over time, indicating that the network’s overall structure and density remained stable. Originality/value This study provides novel evidence using network analysis to map the relationships among sustainability perceptions, key individual variables and employee outcomes. This paper demonstrates that these relationships are robust over time and highlights P–O fit as a core mechanism underpinning how sustainability initiatives contribute to a healthy, productive and sustainable work environment.

Background: Policymakers are increasingly focused on promoting job quality as a means to enhance financial stability and well-being through employment. Thus, evaluations of public workforce inventions are adding employment outcome measures that go beyond wages in order to assess job quality more broadly. Objective: This study employs a mixed methods design to understand what aspects of job quality, beyond wages and benefits, are valued by most participants of a federally funded sectoral job training program and then assess the impact of the program using these grounded insights. Methods: We use secondary data from a randomized control trial of the Health Profession Opportunity Grant (HPOG) for our analyses. Themes from a qualitative analysis of 153 participant interviews informed the selection of three flexibility-related outcome measures for quantitative analysis using experimental survey data. Intention-to-treat estimates were generated using linear regression and ordered logit models, with subgroup analyses examining race/ethnicity, nativity, parental status, and education. Results: Workplace flexibility emerged as a widely valued aspect of job quality, with participants emphasizing scheduling choice as a strategy to achieve work-life balance. Statistical models demonstrate that the program facilitates access to jobs with greater workplace flexibility. Heterogeneity analysis reveals differential impacts by ethnicity and education level, and notable positive results for individuals with children, a group more likely to value and benefit from flexibility. Conclusion: HPOG improved access to jobs offering workplace flexibility-an aspect of job quality prioritized by participants. Findings underscore the importance of incorporating non-wage metrics, especially work-life balance, in workforce program evaluations.

The fishing processing industry in Chimbote, Peru, reflects structural vulnerabilities typical of high-informality extractive sectors, including precarious working conditions and limited internal corporate social responsibility (ICSR), hindering progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8). Although prior research has linked ICSR to positive employee outcomes, the multilevel mechanisms through which these effects translate into organisational outcomes remain insufficiently understood. This study examines the relationship between ICSR and labour management through a multilevel sequential framework. Using survey data from 384 workers in fishing processing firms, a structural model was estimated to analyse the pathways linking ICSR with individual-, group-, and organisational-level labour management. The findings reveal that ICSR does not directly predict organisational-level outcomes. Instead, its effects operate through a sequential bottom-up process, where ICSR is associated with individual-level labour management, which in turn relates to group-level dynamics, ultimately contributing to organisational-level outcomes. This indirect-only mechanism highlights the central role of individual and group processes in translating organisational practices into broader organisational effects. These results contribute to the literature by providing empirical evidence of a multilevel transmission mechanism in a high-informality context, extending current understanding of ICSR beyond single-level models. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest that organisations seeking to improve labour conditions should prioritise interventions at the individual and group levels to achieve sustainable organisational outcomes aligned with SDG 8.

This paper examines the effects of experience rating of workers’ compensation (WC) insurance on workers’ absences and employment. I exploit a French reform that increased the degree of experience rating assigned to medium-size firms, thereby strengthening their incentives to reduce WC benefit expenditures of their employees. The findings show that a higher degree of experience rating led to a significant reduction in absences due to work-related injuries or illnesses; the estimates imply an elasticity of a worker’s annual number of work-related absence days with respect to the share of WC benefit expenditures borne by the firm of −1.20, with an extensive-margin elasticity of −0.43. This reduction is not offset by an increase in nonwork-related absences, suggesting that this effect does not reflect a substitution toward filing claims under the nonwork-related insurance scheme. I find no evidence of adverse effects on employment. Instead, the results suggest that increasing the degree of experience rating significantly improved the employment of workers. • Experience rating creates incentives for firms to reduce workers’ compensation benefit payments. • A French reform increased the degree of experience rating, thereby strengthening these incentives. • Stronger incentives led to a substantial reduction in work-related absences taken by workers. • This reduction was not offset by an increase in nonwork-related absences. • Stronger incentives led to improvements in workers’ employment outcomes.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in contemporary organizations as a tool for digitizing systems and reconfiguring key functions such as human resource management (HRM). However, not all employees exposed to AI-driven HRM digitization benefit equally in their capacity to generate innovative outcomes. Drawing on self-determination theory and integrating perspectives from organizational learning, this study advances a moderated mediation model that explains how and when AI-enabled HRM digitization fosters innovation. We propose that, while AI-driven HRM practices can stimulate the metacognitive strategies of employees, the extent to which these strategies translate into enhanced innovation depends critically on their tacit knowledge awareness. In this proposal, we highlight the paradoxical nature of algorithmic systems: they may serve as autonomy-supportive tools that encourage exploration and self-directed learning or as autonomy-controlling mechanisms that intensify monitoring and reduce intrinsic motivation. Using a multi-wave, multi-source field study of Chinese employees and supervisors (N = 347), we found that AI-driven HRM positively predicts innovation through metacognitive strategies, but only when employees demonstrate high levels of tacit knowledge awareness. When awareness is low, AI-HRM digitization fails to enhance innovation, which reveals the limitations of digital HRM effectiveness. These findings underscore that tacit knowledge awareness fundamentally conditions how AI-driven HRM digitization supports or undermines innovation, which advances theory by extending self-determination perspectives to technology-mediated HRM. Thus, this study discusses the theoretical and practical implications for designing AI-enabled HRM systems that balance algorithmic control with employee autonomy.

Alcohol use disorder, unemployment, and homelessness are interrelated problems that are concentrated among people living in poverty. A recent clinical trial evaluating an employment-based contingency management intervention called abstinence-contingent wage supplements (ACWS) found that ACWS promoted alcohol abstinence, increased employment, and reduced poverty among unemployed adults experiencing homelessness and alcohol use disorder. This secondary analysis evaluated employment and poverty outcomes during the intervention for the 62 participants randomized into the ACWS group using paystubs and self-reported measures collected during the intervention. Paystub measures correlated positively with self-reported outcomes. Most ACWS participants (n=41; 66%) obtained employment during the intervention. During the intervention, employed participants became employed in 6.0 weeks, worked at a job or training program for 15 weeks, worked 33.7 hr per week while employed or in training, and earned $1,054.31 per pay period, on average. Most employed participants earned enough income to qualify as living out of poverty for at least one pay period (80%). While employed, participants lived above the poverty level for most pay periods (79%) during the intervention. Understanding the effects of the ACWS intervention on employment and poverty may prove useful in providing targeted support to people at increased risk of poverty-related health problems.

ABSTRACT Scholarship has extensively documented both the motherhood penalty and immigrant disadvantage in European labor markets. A growing body of research has examined differences in motherhood penalties between native and immigrant women, yet less is known about how these penalties vary within immigrant populations according to origin. This article addresses this gap by analysing how motherhood and immigrant origin jointly structure women's employment and occupational outcomes in France. Drawing on data from the Enquête Emploi en Continu (2015–2020), the analysis demonstrates that while mothers across all groups exhibit lower employment probabilities than childless women, the magnitude of this penalty is greatest among immigrant mothers, particularly those of non‐European‐origin. In terms of occupational attainment, European‐origin immigrant mothers largely retain their professional advantage, whereas non‐European‐origin immigrant mothers show substantially lower professional representation compared to their childless counterparts. These findings highlight how motherhood and origin intersect to produce unequal labor market outcomes and reveal hidden ethnic hierarchies within the motherhood penalty.