Health associates of different employment arrangements: a typological approach to employment security

Background. During the past decades, the traditional employment relationship has undergone fundamental changes. As part of a larger shift from a Fordist to a Post-Fordist mode of socio-economic regulation and the resulting emphasis on flexibility, there has been a decline of the so-called "standard employment relationship" in favour of several non-standard employment arrangements. With the standard employment relationship we intent to describe the unique combination of full-time working hours, stability of employment and attached social rights and protections that was typical for the post second world war period in Europe and the US. This transformation of the employment relationship in the last decades is compelling the need for incorporating health risks related to employment conditions and employment relations in the study of the association between work and health.

Objectives. The objective of our contribution is to relate a multidimensional indicator of employment security, combining different aspects of employment (employment stability; sustainability of income; opportunities for training and development; entitlement to workers' rights and benefits; working time arrangements, formal collective bargaining and negotiation procedures; and informal employment relations), to a selection of health outcomes in a sample of European wage-earners.

Methods. Data from the EUROFOUND 2010 European Working Conditions Survey are used. This cross-sectional dataset contains information on more than 40,000 wage-earners from all EU27 countries as well as Norway, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo. Latent Class Clustering techniques are performed to construct a typology of employment security. Multilevel analyses relate the typology to three different health outcomes: self-perceived general health, mental well-being and physical complaints.

Results. The results of the cluster analysis show five types of employment arrangements: (1) "standard employment-like jobs"; (2) "instrumental jobs"; (3) "precarious intensive jobs"; (4) "precarious unsustainable jobs" and (5) "portfolio jobs". The results show a clear relationship between the typology and the three selected health outcomes, even when controlled for other characteristics of the quality of work.

Conclusion. This multidimensional approach provides innovative insights into the structuring of contemporary employment arrangements among wage-earners and its relationship with health. The results are in line with previous research on the association between non-standard employment arrangements and adverse outcomes in terms of health. The results of this study will raise awareness to public health consequences of employment flexibility.