Abstract
This paper describes the quality of the working environment in the US, Europe and Korea in 2010 and 2015. Based on the job demands-resources model (Journal of Applied Psychology 86:499–512, 2001), we define job strain as a situation where job demands exceed job resources. We find that perceived intimidation and discrimination at work is one of the most powerful predictors of mental and physical health, job satisfaction and job motivation. In 2015, about one third of employees were strained at work across countries. Over the 2010–15 period, job strain has slightly declined, falling in a majority of countries.
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Data Availability
The main data sources consist of:
• The American Working Condition Survey, implemented by RAND and fully documented at American Working Conditions Survey | RAND
• The European Working Condition Survey, implemented by Eurofound and available at European Working Conditions Surveys (EWCS) | Eurofound (europa.eu)
• The Korean Working Condition Survey, implemented by the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency, available at 산업안전보건연구원_영문 | Resources | KWCS (kosha.or.kr).
All publications using these data feature on the dedicated websites.
Notes
The concept is multidimensional and encompasses a broad range of non-pecuniary characteristics of jobs including: i) the nature of the work tasks assigned to each worker; ii) the physical and social conditions under which these tasks are carried out; iii) the characteristics of the firm or organisation where work takes place; iv) the scheduling of working time; v) the prospects that the job provides to workers; vi) the intrinsic rewards associated with the job. The concept denotes those observable characteristics of the job as they are experienced by workers. The OECD Guidelines recommend that job characteristics are measured by looking at outcomes rather than procedures (e.g. labour codes or firm-level practices); that they refer to experiences of individual workers rather than what is observed at the aggregate level; and that they capture objective aspects of the job rather than purely subjective evaluations.
The lower age limit was imposed by the minimum age (18) observed in the AWCS survey results.
Questions in relation to job insecurity (“I might lose my job in the next 6 months” and “If I were to lose or quit my current job, it would be easy for me to find a job with my similar salary”) in the KWCS survey (2010) were scaled with two possible answers “Yes/No” while the same questions were scaled with 5 possible answers in the EWCS survey.
While the European survey used for this paper includes question capturing this aspect, both the US and the Korean surveys did not collect information on emotionally demanding work.
Regressions have been carried out on pooled years 2010 and 2015, except for USA where data are only available in 2015.
Results for Switzerland and the United States, not available for 2010, are not taken into account in this comparison.
The standard deviation across countries of the share of employees strained (respectively well-resourced) also slightly declined, from 10.1 in 2010 to 9.7 in 2015 (respectively from 11.3 to 10.3).
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Fabrice Murtin: Conceptualization; writing; formal analysis; software; review and editing. Benoît Arnaud: Software; writing; formal analysis; review and editing. Duncan Gallie: Conceptualization; writing; formal analysis; review and editing. Christine Le Thi: Software; writing; formal analysis; review and editing. Agnès Parent-Thirion: Conceptualization; writing; formal analysis; review and editing.
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Murtin, F., Arnaud, B., Gallie, D. et al. Changes in Job Strain in the US, Europe and Korea. Applied Research Quality Life (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-024-10312-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-024-10312-1