Indicator
Relationship between number of negative job aspects and health
Published
1 July 2024
Last updated
25 April 2025
Time to read
About 2 mins
About 2 mins
Key points
- The proportion of employees who report ‘less than good’ (fair or poor) health tends to increase as people experience more negative aspects of job quality.
- 37% of employees with three or more negative aspects of job quality report less than good health, compared with 11% of employees who experience no negative aspects of job quality.
Low-quality work can be just as bad for health as unemployment. This can be due to workplace hazards and conditions, but also to the work environment, which can lead to stress and anxiety.
This chart shows the differences in someone’s self-reported health as the number of negative aspects of job quality they experience increases. Each individual’s experiences at work are assessed according to five aspects of job quality: job satisfaction, job wellbeing, job autonomy, job security and pay.
- The percentage of employees with less than good health is higher for people who report more negative job aspects. The proportion of employees reporting poor or fair health with no negative job aspects is 11.3%. This rises steadily to 16.9% for one negative aspect, 23.1% for two and 36.6% for three or more negative aspects.
- It is unlikely that health worsening with increasing negative job aspects can be explained simply by the age composition of each group, because workers over age 55 are excluded and younger employees are more likely to experience low-quality work on these measures.
- This indicator adapts measures used by Chandola and Zhang and is based on available data from Understanding Society.
- Aspects of low-quality work are measured as follows:
- low job satisfaction – employees who report feeling somewhat, mostly or completely dissatisfied with their job
- low job autonomy – across five dimensions of job autonomy (autonomy over job tasks, work pace, work manner, task order and work hours), an average score indicating a little or no autonomy
- low job wellbeing – across six measures of emotional perceptions of jobs (whether it inspires feelings of tension, unease, worry, depression, gloom or misery), an average score indicating that someone experiences these feelings some, most or all of the time
- low job security – perception that job loss is either likely or very likely in the next 12 months
- low pay – earnings are below two-thirds of median UK hourly pay.
- The data presented are only for employees aged 18–55 years old (self-employed people are excluded).
Source: University of Essex – Institute for Social and Economic Research, Understanding Society: Wave 14, UK, 2022–23
