Being in poor-quality work which, perhaps, is boring, routine or represents underemployment or a poor match for the employee’s skills is widely regarded as a good way for the unemployed to remain connected to the labor market – and to keep the work habit. But Butterworth’s data contradict this. The HILDA data show unambiguously that the psychosocial quality of bad jobs is worse than unemployment. Butterworth looked at those moving from unemployment into employment and found that:
"Those who moved into optimal jobs showed significant improvement in mental health compared to those who remained unemployed. Those respondents who moved into poor-quality jobs showed a significant worsening in their mental health compared to those who remained unemployed."
So now we have a slightly different answer to the question about the unemployed being better off in work. Yes they are, as long as they are in good-quality jobs. If they are in bad jobs, there is a perversely strong chance that they will be worse off – especially in terms of their mental health.
Again, for those who think that there should be punitive undertones to policies to get unemployed people back to work would do well to question whether the “any job is a good job” maxim is as accurate as they like to think. Moreover, we should probably question whether the revolving-door characteristics of some policies in which many people fall back out of work soon after being found a job might – in part – owe their poor performance to the damaging psychosocial quality of the work itself.The Washington Post
This shouldn’t stop us from straining every sinew to help people find work. But it should make us think a lot more about how the quality of jobs can affect our health and productivity.…
Unemployed? You shouldn’t just take any job.
Stephen Bevan | Director of the Centre for Workforce Effectiveness
at the Work Foundation and an honorary professor at Lancaster University
ht Dan Lynch
9 comments:
Precisely the reason why we need to widen the definition of what work is and realise that the public service we require is to help people find what they enjoy doing and what makes them feel fulfilled.
It's more like an extension of public school/university and work placements than anything else.
And it also show why it is far more important to maintain liquidity in the labour market than the banks. People need to be able to dump jobs they hate doing, knowing they can pick up something else. That frees up positions for somebody who might like doing that job and also forces competitive change on those job positions that *nobody* likes doing.
Doesn't this finding pose a serious question to the whole "Job Guarantee" idea?
If the jobs being offered are low quality ones then the "solution" might prove worse than the problem (unemployment). What would be the point of providing a job at the cost of mental health problems for the workers?
Can a Job Guarantee offer millions of high quality, fulfilling jobs? If not, then the BIG concept seems to come out winning a point or two as a result of this research.
"Doesn't this finding pose a serious question to the whole "Job Guarantee" idea?"
It does if you assume that a JG offer has to be a non fulfilling low quality job.
As Neil wrote "widen the definition of what work is" and offer a great variety of jobs. Listen to what the person considering a JG wants out of its JG position could be a starting point.
in a highly mechanized and digitized society where work is less and less a requirement for all in their productive years, the benefit is a potential for increased leisure.
The challenge is handling demand deficiency due to workers being made redundant by higher productivity through innovation. This is hardly a challenge at all, other than in the face of fixed mindsets.
Think of the innovation of paid vacations. After millennia of subsistence tribal living, followed by surplus societies controlled by elites, the norm was slavery, serfdom, debt servitude, and being forced to work for low wages to stay alive. The very idea of a paid vacation must have seemed farfetched if not insane in the context it was first proposed.
This just needs a new mindset and some creativity to deal with successfully. The challenge is in making a cultural and institutional transition. The problem is more psychological than real.
The problem with creating JG jobs that are ultra “fulfilling” is that could descend to letting JG employees spend all day making daisy chains, writing poetry, sampling wine etc. And taxpayers would resent paying people to do that.
A “job” is an activity which produces something the customer wants, and I suggest we stick to that.
Also, I’m all in favor of Neil’s helping “people find what they enjoy doing and what makes them feel fulfilled.” To that end, JG should be extended to private sector employers because chances are that JG people will end up with private employers (at least in countries where public spending is less than 50% of GD). And if JG is confined to the public sector, then how are JG people going to find out what sort of private sector work they find “fulfilling and enjoyable”?
I do believe in direct job creation but I'm skeptical of the JG's "one size job fits all" concept, never mind the various "workfare" programs. My gut instinct is that skilled and older workers would resent dead end minimum wage jobs -- I certainly would.
I'm also skeptical that short term grunt jobs would help the individual get hired at a "real" job. Employers want to see a stable job history that is appropriate to the job being applied for, even though that's probably not a realistic expectation in this day and age.
I would enthusiastically support a modern day CCC aimed at younger, less skilled workers. There is a dire and ongoing need for CCC-type maintenance and improvement projects.
Directly creating worthwhile jobs for older, skilled workers would be more difficult.
And then there is the political problem of not threatening capitalism. A minimum wage "transition" grunt job is less threatening to capitalism than a long term skilled job that pays a better wage.
Anyway, thanks for being open minded enough to post the article for discussion. If nothing else, the study debunks the claim that any job is better than being unemployed.
"A “job” is an activity which produces something the customer wants,"
No it isn't. A job is something that you do with your day that you find fulfilling and produces output that somebody else finds worthwhile.
Specifically a job is 'the execution or performance of a task'.
The narrow private sector view of jobs is precisely the reason we're in the mess we're in - with sociopathic levels of dissatisfaction with people's daily activities.
There is no need for that.
I've spent years redesigning jobs that could only have been designed initially by a psychopath. There is extensive literature on job design that shows how to create structures that provide rewarding activities for individuals as well as useful output.
It ain't that difficult.
"To that end, JG should be extended to private sector employers"
Which is completely at odds with the study you're commenting on.
Why continue to repeat the propaganda? There is no justification for private enclosure of output from people the state is paying for. None whatsoever.
Any more than there is justification in a democracy for anybody to overrule the will of the legislature.
"but I'm skeptical of the JG's "one size job fits all" concept"
You should be - since no such concept exists.
There is a one sized wage - designed specifically so that it will not disrupt the private sector wage structure in a mixed capitalist economy.
Beyond that, the jobs that people do on JG can literally be anything that doesn't 'crowd out' a viable and acceptable private or public sector operation.
Jobs that pay 'better wages' are always part of the traditional economy - both private and public. A fireman wouldn't be on the JG for example. They would exist because there is a requirement to provide social insurance against fires and accidents.
But you may very well get lawyers, or indeed software engineers, working on the JG wage doing their thing on the Job Guarantee.
Because they prefer the task that the JG provides, be that citizens advocacy or open source software development.
I do believe in direct job creation but I'm skeptical of the JG's "one size job fits all" concept,
Dan, where did you get that idea. Perhaps one could (erroneously) conclude that because the MMT JG sets the floor in terms of an hourly wage for unskilled labor, which also serves as a price anchor, that a one size fits all job is envisioned. But that is not the import of the proposals made by MMT economists as far as I can see.
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