Institute of Medical Sociology, Centre for Health and Society, Medical Faculty, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Senior Professorship on Work Stress Research, Medical Faculty, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Eur J Public Health. 2022 Jun 1;32(3):384-391. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckac038.
Employees have witnessed rising trend in work stress over the last few decades. However, we know a little about country differences in those trends. Our article fills this gap in the literature by examining heterogeneities in trends in working conditions by country groups defined by their amount of investment into labor market policy (LMP) programs. Additionally, we provide findings on differences in occupational inequalities between country groups.
We use comparative longitudinal data of the European Working Conditions Surveys including cross-sectional information on employees from 15 countries surveyed in Waves 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015. Estimation results are provided by three-way multilevel models with employees nested within country-years nested within countries. Our work stress measure is the proxy version of job strain based on the demand-control model.
Our regression results indicate that for employees in countries with the least LMP spending job strain increased by 10% from 1995 to 2015 compared to a smaller and insignificant change in middle- and high-LMP countries. In low-LMP countries, inequalities in job strain also widened during the studied period: the gap in job strain between the highest- and lowest-skilled increased by 60% from 1995 to 2015. This contrasts a stable gap in middle- and high-LMP countries.
Our results direct the attention to the vulnerable position of the least skilled and highlight that LMP investments may buffer some of the adverse impacts of globalization and technological changes and effectively improve the labor market situation of the least skilled.
在过去几十年中，员工见证了工作压力呈上升趋势。然而，我们对这些趋势在国家之间的差异了解甚少。我们的文章通过研究按劳动力市场政策（LMP）计划投资多少定义的国家群体的工作条件趋势的异质性，填补了这一文献空白。此外，我们还提供了关于国家群体之间职业不平等差异的发现。
我们使用欧洲工作条件调查的比较纵向数据，包括在 1995 年、2000 年、2005 年、2010 年和 2015 年调查的 15 个国家的员工的横断面信息。估计结果由三向多层次模型提供，员工嵌套在国家-年份嵌套在国家内。我们的工作压力测量是基于需求-控制模型的工作紧张的代理版本。
我们的回归结果表明，对于 LMP 支出最少的国家的员工来说，与中高 LMP 国家相比，从 1995 年到 2015 年，工作紧张程度增加了 10%，而中高 LMP 国家的变化则较小且不显著。在低 LMP 国家，工作紧张程度的不平等也在研究期间扩大：最高技能和最低技能之间的工作紧张差距从 1995 年到 2015 年增加了 60%。相比之下，中高 LMP 国家的差距保持稳定。
我们的结果引起了对最底层技能人员的脆弱地位的关注，并强调 LMP 投资可能会缓冲全球化和技术变革的一些不利影响，并有效地改善最底层技能人员的劳动力市场状况。
