Job-Stress, Healthy Days Lost, and Employment Arrangement

Objective: We estimated the prevalence of job stress among workers in regular and alternative employment arrangements and the reduction in annual number of Healthy Days associated with job stress in the U.S.

Background: As employers struggle to stay in business under increasing economic pressures, they rely more on alternative employment arrangements, thereby increasing the pool of contingent workers in the economy. Worker exposure to job stress may vary by employment arrangement. Excessive exposure to stressors at work are considered to be a potential health hazard resulting in reduction in the number of Healthy Days reported by workers. Healthy Days is a Health-related Quality of Life (HRQL) metric used to track population health status (http://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/pdfs/mhd.pdf). It is measured as the sum of the number of days a person reported being mentally and physically fit during the previous 30 days.

Method: We used the quality of work life (QWL) module in the General Social Survey (GSS) to assess the effect of alternative employment arrangements on worker stress level and the corresponding reported number of Healthy Days. The GSS is a biannual, nationally representative, personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center and funded by the National Science Foundation. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) supplemented GSS questions with the QWL module that contained approximately 76 questions related to respondent work environment and quality of work life in 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014 (for details, see http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/stress/qwlquest.html). We considered pooled cross-sectional data for 5736 individuals in these 4 years. We grouped respondents into two groups, those who were stressed at work and those who were not, based on their responses to the survey question, “how stressful is your work?” We further grouped respondents according to their employment arrangement, including whether they were: i) independent contractors, ii) on call, iii) paid by a temporary agency, iv) working for a contractor, or v) regular employees. We estimated the prevalence of stressed workers for each of these categories and the mean differences in Healthy Days among those who reported being stressed and those who reported not being stressed for each employment arrangement category. We controlled for demographics including age, gender, race, marital status, having children, education, and household income. We also controlled for behavioral health variables including smoking, days with exercise, and eating habits (fruits and vegetables); basic accessibility to social needs including dentist/doctor visit, satisfaction with current city, living area, access to medicine, safety, money to buy food, shelter, and healthcare; and economic condition including being happy with current living standard relative to that of neighbor and social support.

Results: Preliminary results demonstrate that those working for contractors and temporary agencies reported being more stressed at work than regular employees. On-call workers and independent contractors reported being less stressed at work than regular employees. On an average, 30% of workers reported being stressed. Stressed workers reported 46 less Healthy Days per year due to poor physical and mental health.