Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Labor Market Entry and Working Conditions

The transition from youth to adulthood can be described as a sequence of events that includes finishing (school) education, entering labor market, gaining financial independence from the family of origins, setting up a separate household, establishing a long-term relationship with a life partner, becoming a parent (Elfering et al. 2007; Nilsen et al. 2018). Thus, adulthood marks the ‘mature individual’ and is associated with autonomy and independence from the family of origin (Nilsen et al. 2018). However, recent research showed that structural changes in Western societies during the past decades lead to greater variability and fragmentation in transitions to adulthood, questioning the prototypical sequence of these social markers (Billari et al. 2019; Buchmann and Kriesi 2011; Hellevik and Settersten 2013). In this context, the successful integration in the labor market plays an important role for young people (Buchmann and Kriesi 2011). However, the employment prospects of youths and young people are more dependent on macro-economic developments compared to adults.Footnote 1 Young people are labor market outsider as they possess only limited exploitable human capital (Lange and Reiter 2018). Thus, they have to prove potential employers that they possess an extraordinary willingness to learn and work. Therefore, many of them try to engage in continuative educational activity and low paid (or unpaid) internships (Lange and Reiter 2018). Thus, with regard to the labor market, young persons are in situations where they are more exploitable. Moreover, there have been many changes in the labor market in recent decades, such as the delocalization of production, the development of non-permanent and part-time work, the introduction of new technologies (digitalization) and, thus, an increased demand of flexible employees with varied skills (Balliester and Elsheikhi 2018). Young people might be more vulnerable to this increase in employment flexibility because many of them had not a chance to gain work experience yet, lack of seniority and professional networks and many employers might use temporary contracts as screening instrument, when dismissal of permanent employees is costly (Bukodi et al. 2008).

The concrete experiences that young people encounter during the transition from school/education into work depend also on their specific working conditions. The working conditions have a strong influence on “whether the transition is experienced as predominantly stressful or as predominantly rewarding and challenging” (Elfering et al. 2007, 98). Thus, the beginning of a job may be a time when a young person’s health and well-being is challenged. Indeed, the link between poor psychosocial job quality and health and well-being among young people have been well established (e.g., Milner et al. 2017). What constitutes high job quality is still under debate (Steffgen et al. 2020). However, there is a consensus that it includes positive interactions with others (colleagues, supervisors, clients, etc.), feedback about job performance, working autonomously, skill development and learning, as well as providing benefits such as pay and security (Gallie 2007; Milner et al. 2017).

1.2 Working Conditions and Health and Well-being

Some authors (e.g., Muñoz de Bustillo et al. 2011; Van Aerden et al. 2016) decompose job quality into two broad areas: employment quality and quality of work. Employment quality describe all job characteristics that can be perceived as the framework surrounding the intrinsic activity of work (e.g., career advancement, work-life balance). Employment quality includes income satisfaction, training opportunities, career advancement, job security, difficulty of job change, and work-life-conflict. Income is an important concern for employees. However, what seems to be more important for well-being and job satisfaction than income is satisfaction with income that is affected by the discrepancy of income that employees think they should receive and their actual income (Williams et al. 2006). Indeed, research has shown that high income does not improve emotional well-being (Kahneman and Deaton 2010) and that rank of income, not income per se, affects life satisfaction (Boyce et al. 2010). Therefore, income satisfaction can be seen as key contributor to job satisfaction (Williams et al. 2006). Training opportunities have been linked with job satisfaction (Schmidt, 2007), increased work engagement (Bakker 2011) and reduced turnover intentions (Koster et al. 2011). Career advancement has been linked with higher job satisfaction (Kalleberg 1977), higher affective commitment and higher work engagement (Poon 2013), as well as reduced turnover (Kraimer et al. 2011). Job insecurity has been meta-analytically linked to various negative outcomes such as reduced job satisfaction and mental health (Sverke et al. 2002). Furthermore, employability is also linked to well-being (De Cuyper et al. 2008). Moreover, low work-life-balance (i.e., work-life conflict) has been found to be related with strain and poor psychological health (Lunau et al. 2014; Nohe et al. 2015).

Quality of work refers to the ways and conditions under which the activity of work can affect the well-being of workers, often focusing on job design, work intensity, social and physical conditions. Job design includes participation in decision making, feedback about their job performance and working autonomously. Participation refers to the involvement of employees in decision-making processes. Previous research has shown that this form of participation is linked with less role stress (e.g., role conflict, role ambiguity; Jackson 1983), perceived supervisor and organizational support (Reeves et al. 2012), job satisfaction, skill use and skill enhancement (Gallie 2013). Feedback reflects the degree to which other organizational members (i.e., colleagues, supervisors) provide information about the work output. It has been meta-analytically linked with burnout and engagement (Crawford et al. 2010). Autonomy reflects if an employee has ample opportunities to do his/her work autonomously (i.e., decide when and how to do the work as well as the content and order of tasks). It is one of the most often researched job resources (Nielsen et al. 2017) and has been meta-analytically linked with burnout (Alarcon 2011) and work engagement (Halbesleben 2010). The different dimensions of work intensity are job demands that are also related to employee’s well-being. High mental demands can decrease well-being, when no recovery takes place (Meijman and Mulder 1998). It has been linked with psychological ill health (Michélsen and Bildt 2003). Time pressure has been meta-analytically linked to reduced well-being (LePine et al. 2005), also on a day-to-day level (Ilies et al. 2010) and might also lead to a lack of psychological detachment (Sonnentag et al. 2014). Emotional demands have been meta-analytically linked with reduced well-being and job attitudes (Hülsheger and Schewe 2011; Zapf 2002). Additionally, a plethora of studies has shown that social conditions have a strong influence on employee’s health, attitude and behavior. One of the most often studied condition is social support (Nielsen et al. 2017). Social support represents a job resource that reflects the degree to which an employee gets advice and assistance from others when needed. Social support has various effects on well-being as it reduces the experienced strain, mitigates perceived stressors and buffers the stressor-strain relationship (Viswesvaran et al. 1999). In contrast, competition and mobbing can be seen as special job stressors. Competition has been linked to workaholism (Keller et al. 2016), and thus, might also have an influence on employee’s well-being. Workplace mobbing refers to a situation, where the employee is being subjected to a series of negative and/or hostile acts or other behaviors that are experienced as annoying and/or oppressive at the workplace (Agervold and Mikkelsen 2004). It is a serious phenomenon that has various negative consequences for the targeted employees’ health (e.g., depression, burnout), attitudes (e.g., lower job commitment), and work-related behavior (e.g., absence; see Nielsen and Einarsen 2012; Sischka et al. 2020a, 2021). Finally, physical conditions can be seen as job demands that are related to well-being and health. Risk of accidents and physical burden have been linked to well-being and physical health (e.g., Nahrgang et al. 2011; Bailey et al. 2015; Burr et al. 2017). To summarize, there is a vast amount of studies showing that working conditions affect well-being, health, and motivation among others (Bakker and Demerouti 2017; Oldham and Fried 2016; Parker 2014).

1.3 Aims of the Current Study

It is important to research working conditions in a Luxembourgish context to guide possible policy interventions. The Luxembourgish labor market differs in some respect from labor markets in other European countries. For instance, compared to young employees in other European countries, the percentage of young employees in Luxembourg with a permanent contract is quite high, the same applies to full-time employment (Nunez and Livanos 2015; Rokicka et al. 2015). Moreover, regarding working conditions there also exists quite some variation between European countries. Recent research has revealed that Luxembourg has a high mobbing (Sischka and Steffgen 2019a) and risk of depression prevalence (Sischka and Steffgen 2020) at the workplace. Thus, it is important to study how Luxembourg performs in relation to other working conditions and health and well-being dimensions. Furthermore, as younger and older workers differ regarding their needs, attitudes, and skills, it is important to employ a lifespan development perspective on working conditions and job design (Truxillo et al. 2012). Age is associated with personality (Roberts et al. 2006), cognitive functions (Craik and Salthouse 2008), physical ability, work experience, health (Kanfer and Ackerman 2004; Kooij et al. 2008), and family demands (Thrasher et al. 2016) among others, with the possible consequence that working conditions might be perceived differently by employees in different age ranges. Indeed, research has revealed that the association between certain working conditions (e.g., autonomy) and well-being and health (e.g., burnout; Ng and Feldman 2015) as well as between working conditions and job attraction (Zacher et al. 2017) is moderated by age. For instance, a meta-analysis (Ng and Feldman 2015) found that the association between job autonomy and job satisfaction is weaker for older employees. However, the moderation effect of age on the association between many other working conditions (e.g., career advancement) and different well-being dimensions have not been studied so far.

This chapter focuses on the working conditions of young employees in Luxembourg from a health perspective. It sheds light on the development of employment quality, quality of work and well-being dimensions for young employees (between 16 and 29 years) and compares this with the development of these dimensions for older employees. Furthermore, this chapter explores the intercorrelations between different working conditions and different well-being dimensions and investigates if these intercorrelations are different between young employees and older ones. Moreover, with regression analyses it is explored whether certain working conditions are more important for younger employees compared to older ones. By this, the chapter wants to give answers to the following questions: How do young employees perceive their working environment compared to older ones? Does the influence of certain working conditions on well-being and health differ between young employees and older ones? Are certain working conditions more important for young employees than for older ones regarding well-being and health?

2 Methods

2.1 Data

The Quality of Work project aims to assess the work quality and its effects on well-being among employees working in Luxembourg. It was implemented by the University of Luxembourg in collaboration with the Luxembourg Chamber of Labor (a council that aims to defend the employees’ rights with regards to legislation) as an assessment over yearly waves since 2014Footnote 2. Data are entailed via Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) and (since 2018) via computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) and represent a stratified random sample that is also representative in terms of workers’ state of residency in Luxembourg (see Table 1 for the project description). The annually survey is conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki (i.e., voluntary participation, participants were free to withdraw their consent at any time throughout the interviews without negative consequences for them). Data from the most recent 2019 wave was used for the correlation and regression analyses. A weighting variable was used that accounts for unequal sample selection probability and adjusts the sample so that it reflects the socio-demographic structure of the target populationFootnote 3 (i.e., post-stratification; for a detailed discussion of the data collection and weighting procedure see Schütz and Thiele 2019). Finally, the development of employment quality, quality of work and well-being dimensions between 2016 and 2019 was described with data from these waves.Footnote 4

Table 1 Quality of Work project description (own illustration)
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2.2 Measures

The project assesses annually information on employment quality (i.e., income satisfaction, training opportunities, career advancement, job security, difficulty to change job, work life conflict), quality of work (i.e., participation, feedback, autonomy, social support, mobbing, competition, mental demands, time pressure, emotional demands, physical burden, risk of accident) and well-being (i.e., work satisfaction, vigor, burnout, general well-being, subjective health problems) dimensions. These dimensions are measured with 2–7-item scales (see the Table in the Appendix for number of items and internal consistencies). A 5-point Likert response format was used, either with frequency categories (never, seldom, sometimes, often, (almost) always) or with degree of extent (to a very low extent, to a low extent, to a medium extent, to a large extent, to a very large extent). Additionally, work satisfaction, vigor (Schaufeli et al. 2006) burnout, general well-being (Topp et al. 2015; Sischka et al. 2020b), and health problems are assessed. All scales are standardized so that they have a possible range between 0–100 (for a detailed discussion and in-depth psychometric analyses on these scales see Sischka and Steffgen 2019b and Steffgen et al. 2020).Footnote 5

3 Results

3.1 Demographic and Employment Characteristics

Table 2 shows some demographic characteristics and employment conditions across the three age groups. Only 48.8% of the employees between 16 and 29 years are currently in a partnership, compared to 77.8% of employees between 30 and 54 years and 81.8% of employees that are 55 years old or older. Furthermore, only 15.4% of the younger employees live with at least one child in the household compared to 68.9% of employees between 30 and 54 years. Regarding employment characteristics, about 17.4% of the young employees have supervisor responsibilities, compared to 28.6% of the employees in the middle age category and 31.8% in the oldest age category. Moreover, younger employees have less often a permanent contract (89.3% compared to 97.9% and 97.3% in the middle and oldest age group) and more often a full-time employment (92.5% vs. 79.6% and 75.7%). This is also reflected by the contractual and actual working hours per week: On average, employees between 16 and 29 years have longer contractually arranged working hours (38.8 h) and longer actual working hours (42.3 h) per week compared to employees in the middle (37.5 h and 40.2 h) and in the oldest (36.7 h and 39.0 h) age category.

Table 2 Demographics and employment characteristics for age groups (in 2019) (own illustration)
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Table 3 Regression results using well-being dimensions as criteria
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3.2 Mean Differences Across Age Groups

Figure 1 shows the mean-centered employment quality dimensions across the three age groups. A positive value indicates that the group mean is above the total mean, whereas a negative value indicates that the group mean is below the total mean. The younger employees are significantly less satisfied with their income compared to older employees (see the non-overlapping confidence intervals). On the other hand, younger employees perceive more training opportunities and more career advancement than the older age groups. Moreover, they perceive lower levels of job change difficulties. The oldest age group perceives the lowest level of work-life conflict.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Means of Employment quality dimensions (mean-centered) across age groups (2019) (own illustration)

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Figure 2 shows the Quality of work dimensions. Younger employees get more feedback and more social support, compared to the older age groups. On the other hand, they perceive their work situation as less autonomous. Compared with employees between 30 and 54 years, younger employees report higher levels of physical burden and risk of accident.

Fig. 2
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Means of Quality of work dimensions (mean-centered) across age groups (2019) (own illustration)

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Figure 3 shows the different well-being and health dimensions across age groups. There are no significant differences for work satisfaction, burnout and health problems. However, employees with an age of 55 years and more report higher levels of vigor and general well-being compared with employees between 16 and 29 years and employees between 30 and 54 years.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Means of Well-Being dimensions (mean-centered) across age groups (2019) (own illustration)

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3.3 Intercorrelations Between Working Conditions and Well-being Across Age Groups

Figure 4 shows the intercorrelations between the different working conditions and health and well-being measures across the different age groups. Generally, the correlations do not differ much between the age groups. Interestingly, difficulty to change the job is not related to any of the health and well-being measures for the youngest employees, whereas for the older age groups it is associated with less health and well-being. Work satisfaction is strongly positively intercorrelated with participation, feedback, social support and income satisfaction and strongly negatively intercorrelated with mobbing. Vigor is negatively interrelated with mobbing and work-life-conflict. Burnout shows the strongest intercorrelations with mobbing, emotional demands and work life conflict. General well-being is strongly positively associated with income satisfaction and negatively associated with mobbing and work life conflict. Finally, health problems are most strongly correlated with physical burden and work life conflict.

Fig. 4
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Intercorrelations between working conditions and well-being dimensions across age groups (2019) (own illustration)

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3.4 Regression Analyses with Well-being Measures as Outcomes

Table 3 shows the result of the regression analyses with the different well-being measures as outcome variables and age groups, the different working conditions and the product terms of age groups and working conditions (interaction effects) as predictors. The age group 16–29 years represents the reference group. Thus, the regression coefficients of the working conditions represent those of the youngest employees. The interaction effects represent the change in the main effects for the two other age groups. Regarding work satisfaction, participation, social support, mobbing, time pressure, income satisfaction and training opportunities showed significant effects on the outcome variable. There were two significant interaction effects. The slopes of the variables physical burden and job security changed for one of the two other age groups. Physical burden and job security had stronger effects on work satisfaction for the oldest age group. Higher levels of physical burden and higher level of job security corresponded with higher levels of work satisfaction in the oldest age group. Regarding vigor as outcome variable, feedback, training opportunities, career advancement and job security were significant predictors in the youngest age group. One interaction term was significant. For employees in the middle age group, difficulties in changing the job had a negative influence on vigor. For burnout as outcome variable, competition, mobbing, emotional demands, physical burden, risk of accident, job security and work-life-conflict were significant predictors for employees in the youngest age group. Three interaction effects got significant. Compared with employees in the youngest age group competition and job security were more and mobbing was less important for burnout for employees in the middle age group. Regarding general well-being, mobbing, mental demands, training opportunities, career advancement, job security and work-life-conflict were significant predictors for the youngest employees. The lower mobbing and work-life-conflict and the higher mental demands, training opportunities, job security the higher was the general well-being. Compared with the youngest employees, mental demands had a negative and job security and training opportunities no effect on general well-being for employees in the middle age group. For health problems, competition, mobbing emotional demands, physical burden, income satisfaction, job security and work-life-conflict were significant predictors. Compared with the youngest employees, for employees in the middle age group participation was more and competition, income satisfaction and job security were less important for health problems. Again, compared with the youngest employees for employees in the oldest age group job security was less important for health problems.

3.5 Development of the Working Conditions and Well-being Dimensions

Figure 5 shows the development of the employment quality across the three age groups between 2016 and 2019. Most of the dimensions are quite stable over time. Younger employees perceive more training opportunities and stronger career advancement compared to older employees, a stable finding over time. Younger employees also perceive less difficulties in changing the job compared with employees that are 55 years old or older. Regarding income satisfaction, there is a small downturn for the youngest employees and a small upturn for the oldest employees. The oldest employees perceive their job as more secure compared to the employees in the youngest and middle age groups. On the other hand, employees that are 55 years old or older on average perceive less work life conflicts.

Fig. 5
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Development of the Employment Quality dimensions across age groups (own illustration)

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Figure 6 shows the development of the Quality of Work dimensions. Employees between 16 and 29 years reported more feedback and social support compared to older employees. However, young employees also report higher levels of physical burden and risk of accident over the years. There seems to be a slight trend downwards in all age groups for these dimensions. There are no clear differences regarding, participation, mobbing, competition, mental demands, time pressure and emotional demands.

Fig. 6
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Development of the Quality of work dimensions across age groups (own illustration)

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Figure 7 shows the development of the different well-being dimensions for the three age groups. Employees between 16 and 29 years report higher levels of work satisfaction and lower levels of subjective health problems; these differences are quite stable over time. However, there are no age remarkable differences with regards to vigor, burnout and general well-being.

Fig. 7
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Development of the Well-Being dimensions across age groups (own illustration)

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4 Discussion and Conclusion

In this chapter the working conditions of younger employees (between 16 and 29 years old) compared with older ones were analyzed. Younger employees have less often a permanent contract and more often a full-time employment compared to the older age group. The large percentage of young employees with full-time employment is also reflected by the fact that this group on average works longer compared with employees in the older age group. With regard to employment quality, younger employees perceive more training opportunities and stronger career advancement as well as less difficulties in job change compared to employees in the older age group. Thus, one might conclude that young employees in Luxembourg are not particularly affected by “precarious” (Kretsos and Livanos 2016) or “insecure work” (Heery and Salmon 2000) that can be described as “uncertain, unpredictable and risk from the point of view of the worker” (Kalleberg 2009, p. 2) and that is characterized by fixed-term contracts, involuntary part-time work, and lack of training possibilities (Kretsos & Livanos 2016). On the other hand, the percentage of young employees and new hires with a fixed-term contract increased over the last years in Luxembourg (Eichhorst et al. 2017). With regard to job design, young employees perceive more feedback from their colleagues and their supervisors, but less autonomy at work compared to employees in the older age groups. Regarding social conditions, young employees perceive more social support from their colleagues. There is no difference for perceived competition and mobbing between the age groups. However, young employees report higher levels of physical burden and risk of accident. With regard to the well-being, younger employees report lower levels of vigor and general well-being.

Correlational and regression analyses revealed that working conditions are associated with employee’s well-being and health, and that mobbing and work-life conflicts are especially detrimental. Moreover, regression analyses showed that the effects of certain working conditions on different well-being dimensions are not the same for the three age groups. Levels of work satisfaction of young employees seem to be less affected by lower job security compared to employees in the older age group. On the other side, the burnout level of young employees seems to be more affected by mobbing compared to the older age groups. Moreover, for the employees in the youngest age group mental demands is a positive predictor for general well-being, whereas it is a negative predictor for employees in the older age groups. A possible explanation for this finding might be the decline of cognitive functioning with age (Fisher et al. 2017) and the following different appraisal of mental demands. Whereas younger employees might regard mental demands more as a challenge, older employees might frame this work characteristic more as a hindranceFootnote 6 (Li et al. 2020). On the other hand, income satisfaction and job security are stronger predictors for health problems in employees in the youngest age group compared with older employees.

4.1 Practical Implications

The present study has shown that working conditions have not the same effects on well-being dimensions for all age groups, a finding that has been supported by previous research (Converso et al. 2018; Ramos et al. 2016; Zaniboni et al. 2013, 2016). Therefore, job design interventions should employ a lifespan development perspective (Truxillo et al. 2012, 2015) as working conditions seem to have different levels of importance for younger employees. If policy makers want to adapt a health perspective on working conditions of younger employees, there exists feasible and effective intervention strategies (LaMontagne et al. 2010). However, the current study showed that they should try to improve the social conditions (i.e., reduction of mobbing incidents, increase of social support) as these are strong predictors of the younger employees’ health and well-being. Moreover, training opportunities and job security are especially important for younger employees’ general well-being. Finally, mental demands seem to have beneficial effects for younger employees as opposed to older employees.

Recent research has indicated that working conditions have indeed changed since the last decades (Holman and Rafferty 2018; Wegman et al. 2018). The present study has also shown that small changes of working conditions can be observed within a short time period. It is important that these changes are monitored, and that negative developments are counteracted.

4.2 Limitations and Outlook

Some limitations of the present study need to be considered that provide directions for future research. First, it is important to note that the present study did not differentiate between educational levels due to sample size restrictions. Several studies showed that low-educated and low-skilled young people are more likely to be in a precarious/insecure working situation (e.g., Berloffa et al. 2019; de Grip and Wolbers 2006). Moreover, previous studies have found that especially young employees with lower educational levels report higher levels of adverse working conditions and lower health and well-being (Akkermans et al. 2013). Thus, future studies might also research education as possible boundary conditions of the present results. Second, the data analysis was only correlational, thus lacking time precedence. Therefore, causal assumptions cannot be drawn. Third, the present study used self-reported measures to assess working conditions. Strictly speaking, these are measures of perception, not objective working conditions (Bonde 2008). Moreover, the mono-method design may have led to an overrating of effects (i.e., common method variance; Podsakoff et al. 2012). Future studies might include additional data sources (e.g., observational studies, third-party reports) to assess the working conditions in a more objective way. Finally, the present study used a variable-oriented approach. Futures studies might employ a person-oriented approach that focus on identifying subpopulations of employees who show different patterns of working conditions (Mäkikangas et al. 2018).