The Links Between Labour-Market Experiences and Health: Towards a Research Framework

Policy challenges that involve the nature and distribution of labour-market experiences and research agendas related to the health consequences of these experiences have not evolved in tandem. Moreover, new policy challenges have not stimulated new research agendas. I developed a research framework with which to conceptualize and plan research on the health consequences of labour-market experiences. The first half of the framework comprises a typology of labour-market experiences: twelve experiences related to the availability of work (discouraged worker, unemployed, underemployed, fully employed, fear of unemployment, and overemployed/overworked, each considered across a two-category time dimension) and fourteen experiences related to the nature of work (grouped by job characteristics, job position within the firm, and organizational characteristics of the firm, each considered at a point in time or as a change over time). The second half of the framework comprises the range of possible health and economic consequences of these experiences. Using the framework I identified the most serious gaps in the research literature: limited attention to interactions between experiences related to the availability of work and those related to the nature of work and to interactions between labour-market experiences and the context for these experiences; limited or no attention to some increasingly prevalent experiences like involuntary part-time employment or self-employment; and no simultaneous measurement of health and economic outcomes. A more relevant and focused research agenda in this area could help to improve employers' and governments' ability to articulate the trade-offs that are otherwise implicit in their policies with multiple consequences.