Characterizing Long-Term Trajectories of Work and Disability Leave: The Role of Occupational Exposures, Health, and Personal Demographics.

OBJECTIVE

This article characterizes trajectories of work and disability leave across the tenure of a cohort of 49,595 employees in a large American manufacturing firm.

METHODS

We employ sequence and cluster analysis to group workers who share similar trajectories of work and disability leave. We then use multinomial logistic regression models to describe the demographic, health, and job-specific correlates of these trajectories.

RESULTS

All workers were clustered into one of eight trajectories. Female workers (RR 1.3 to 2.1), those experiencing musculoskeletal disease (RR 1.3 to 1.5), and those whose jobs entailed exposure to high levels of air pollution (total particulate matter; RR 1.9 to 2.4) were more likely to experience at least one disability episode.

CONCLUSIONS

These trajectories and their correlates provide insight into disability processes and their relationship to demographic characteristics, health, and working conditions of employees.