Job Insecurity Increases Health Problems

According to a recent study by the University of Michigan, job insecurity is more harmful to workers' health than actual job loss or unemployment. The study, conducted by Dr. Sara Burgard at the University's Institute for Social Research, found that in one of the groups studied, job insecurity was a stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension.
This study has important implications. It suggests that the structure of the economy is an important source of health disparities. While many studies of health disparities focus on changing the "unhealthy" habits of low-income and minority individuals, this study suggests that these groups have simply been the canaries in the coal mine. For individuals in these groups, job insecurity is a way of life.
The connection between poor health and job insecurity suggests that our economic arrangements are a vector of disease. The short-run efficiency represented by a "flexible" labor force that is chronically on the verge of layoffs, shift changes, benefit reductions, or more punitive management practices has long term costs. In the long-term, the "unhealthiest" behaviors may be those that we exhibit as a society and as individual consumers when we support this business model.
A report on this study can be found at:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7282