Income and employment: quality of work

There are a number of employment characteristics other than income that affect health:

Work that is good for health includes work that:

• is safe,
• offers a degree of stability,
• gives the employee more control and autonomy,
• is fulfilling and meaningful,
• provides routes to learning and progression is good for health

(Bambra, 2011).

Work that can damage health includes work that:

• has low pay,
• low control,
• is insecure
• has low job satisfaction

The Health Foundation (2020) 

Multiple disadvantage

Jobs which lack a number of these characteristics can be described as 'multiply disadvantaged'.  

• In 2016/17, 35% of employees in rural Scotland and 37% of employees in urban Scotland worked in jobs with two or more negative characteristics.
• Employees in jobs with three or more negative job aspects are more than three times as likely to report their health is not good, compared to those in jobs with no negative attributes (20% vs 6%). 

Being trapped in poor quality work

• More than half those in poor quality jobs in 2010/11 remained in poor quality jobs six years later (Health Foundation, 2022)
• Job quality is not randomly distributed across the population.  Young employees, Pakistani/Bangladeshi, Caribbean/African/Black African, and Mixed Ethnicity employees, and employees in semi-routine and routine occupations are more likely to work in poor quality jobs.

People in low-skilled, poor quality or precarious employment have worse health outcomes

• Katikireddi et al. (2017) found that mortality rates for people in some types of jobs (elementary, process and cleaning) were three times higher than those in others (professional and managerial) in the UK, including in Scotland.
• Professionals and managers are, in general, consistently advantaged compared with worker in transport, process, caring, customer service and elementary occupations (Public Health Scotland, 2017)  
• Chandola and Zhang (2017) found that people moving into poor quality jobs had higher levels of chronic stress than those who remained unemployed or moved into good jobs.
• Persistent precarious employment is associated with poorer self-reported health and poor mental health (Pulford et al, 2022). 

What progress has been made on good work in Scotland since 2016?

The Fair Work Convention found Scotland made mixed progress towards becoming a Fair Work Nation between 2016 and 2021:

• Opportunity: Four out of five indicators within the opportunity dimension have improved since 2016.
• Respect: Performance in the respect dimension is mixed. Out of eight indicators, four worsened, three improved, and one indicator remained broadly stable between 2016-2021.
• Security: Most indicators in the security dimension of the Fair Work Framework have either improved or maintained similar values between 2016 and 2021.
• Fulfilment: Indicators related to fulfilment broadly improved in 2021 compared to their 2016 values.
• Effective Voice: Effective voice indicators of Fair Work fluctuated around their 2016 levels throughout.