IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v31y2017i1p71-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Underemployment and well-being in the UK before and after the Great Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Jason Heyes

    (University of Sheffield, UK)

  • Mark Tomlinson

    (University of Sheffield, UK)

  • Adam Whitworth

    (University of Sheffield, UK)

Abstract

Since the start of the economic crisis in 2008 there has been widespread concern with changes in the level and composition of unemployment. The phenomenon of underemployment has, however, received markedly less attention, although it too increased in extent following the start of the crisis. This article considers the consequences of underemployment for the subjective well-being of UK employees. Drawing on data from the 2006 and 2012 Employment and Skills Surveys, the article assesses how the Great Recession affected relationships between different dimensions of underemployment and well-being. The findings demonstrate that the negative well-being consequences of workers’ dissatisfaction with opportunities to make use of their abilities became more substantial, as did the consequences of being ‘hours constrained’ and having an unsatisfactory workload. The article also shows that the economic crisis had a negative impact on the well-being of employees who work very long hours.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason Heyes & Mark Tomlinson & Adam Whitworth, 2017. "Underemployment and well-being in the UK before and after the Great Recession," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(1), pages 71-89, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:31:y:2017:i:1:p:71-89
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017016666199
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017016666199
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017016666199?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew E. Clark, 2003. "Unemployment as a Social Norm: Psychological Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 289-322, April.
    2. Allen, Jim & van der Velden, Rolf, 2001. "Educational Mismatches versus Skill Mismatches: Effects on Wages, Job Satisfaction, and On-the-Job Search," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 434-452, July.
    3. Clark, Andrew E., 2010. "Worker Well-Being in Booms and Busts," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1002, CEPREMAP.
    4. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1733-1749, April.
    5. David N.F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2014. "Labour Market Slack in the UK," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 229(1), pages 4-11, August.
    6. Gallie, Duncan & White, Michael & Cheng, Yuan & Tomlinson, Mark, 1998. "Restructuring the Employment Relationship," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198294412.
    7. Jahoda,Marie, 1982. "Employment and Unemployment," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521285865, October.
    8. David N.F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2010. "Uk Unemployment In The Great Recession," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 214(1), pages 3-25, October.
    9. David G. Blanchflower, 2015. "As Good as it Gets? The UK Labour Market in Recession and Recovery," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 231(1), pages 76-80, February.
    10. Gregg, Paul & Wadsworth, Jonathan (ed.), 2011. "The Labour Market in Winter: The State of Working Britain," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199587377.
    11. David Spencer, 2013. "Promoting High Quality Work: Obstacles and Opportunities," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 583-597, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Curtis, Sarah & Pearce, Jamie & Cherrie, Mark & Dibben, Christopher & Cunningham, Niall & Bambra, Clare, 2019. "Changing labour market conditions during the ‘great recession’ and mental health in Scotland 2007–2011: an example using the Scottish Longitudinal Study and data for local areas in Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 227(C), pages 1-9.
    2. Duncan Gallie & Ying Zhou & Alan Felstead & Francis Green & Golo Henseke, 2017. "The implications of direct participation for organisational commitment, job satisfaction and affective psychological well-being: a longitudinal analysis," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(2), pages 174-191, March.
    3. Fregin, Marie-Christine & Bijlsma, Ineke & van der Velden, Rolf, 2018. "Much ado about social outcomes?," Research Memorandum 017, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    4. Bell, David N.F. & Blanchflower, David G., 2019. "The well-being of the overemployed and the underemployed and the rise in depression in the UK," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 180-196.
    5. Mousteri, Victoria & Daly, Michael & Delaney, Liam, 2020. "Underemployment and psychological distress: Propensity score and fixed effects estimates from two large UK samples," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    6. Azagra-Caro, Joaquín M. & Tijssen, Robert J.W. & Tur, Elena M. & Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo, 2019. "University-industry scientific production and the Great Recession," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 210-220.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antje Mertens & Miriam Beblo, 2016. "Self-Reported Satisfaction and the Economic Crisis of 2007–2010: Or How People in the UK and Germany Perceive a Severe Cyclical Downturn," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 125(2), pages 537-565, January.
    2. Andrew E. Clark, 2018. "Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness: Where Next?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 245-269, June.
    3. Lídia Farré & Francesco Fasani & Hannes Mueller, 2018. "Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-34, December.
    4. Thi Truong An Hoang & Andreas Knabe, 2021. "Time Use, Unemployment, and Well-Being: An Empirical Analysis Using British Time-Use Data," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(6), pages 2525-2548, August.
    5. Simon Luechinger & Stephan Meier & Alois Stutzer, 2010. "Why Does Unemployment Hurt the Employed?: Evidence from the Life Satisfaction Gap Between the Public and the Private Sector," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(4), pages 998-1045.
    6. Lars Kunze & Nicolai Suppa, 2014. "Bowling Alone or Bowling at All? The Effect of Unemployment on Social Participation," Ruhr Economic Papers 0510, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    7. Farzin, Y. Hossein & Akao, Ken-Ichi, 2005. "Non-pecuniary Work Incentive and Labor Supply," Working Papers 190910, University of California, Davis, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    8. Kelly A. Clark, 2021. "Unemployed at Midlife: Coping Strategies that Safeguard Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(5), pages 1861-1879, October.
    9. Drydakis, Nick, 2015. "The effect of unemployment on self-reported health and mental health in Greece from 2008 to 2013: A longitudinal study before and during the financial crisis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 43-51.
    10. Lídia Farré & Francesco Fasani & Hannes Mueller, 2018. "Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-34, December.
    11. Matteo Picchio & Michele Ubaldi, 2023. "Intergenerational Scars: The Impact Of Parental Unemployment On Individual Health Later In Life," Working Papers 478, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    12. Andrew J. Oswald & Stephen Wu, 2011. "Well-Being across America," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1118-1134, November.
    13. Francesco Ferrante, 2017. "Great Expectations: The Unintended Consequences of Educational Choices," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(2), pages 745-767, March.
    14. Nikolova, Milena & Cnossen, Femke, 2020. "What makes work meaningful and why economists should care about it," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    15. Andreas Knabe & Ronnie Schöb & Joachim Weimann, 2016. "Partnership, Gender, and the Well-Being Cost of Unemployment," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 1255-1275, December.
    16. Michela Ponzo, 2012. "On-the-job Search in Italian Labor Markets: An Empirical Analysis," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 213-232, July.
    17. Brown, Sarah & Taylor, Karl & Wheatley Price, Stephen, 2005. "Debt and distress: Evaluating the psychological cost of credit," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 642-663, October.
    18. Dominik Buttler, 2022. "Employment Status and Well-Being Among Young Individuals. Why Do We Observe Cross-Country Differences?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 409-437, November.
    19. Kirsten Stam & Inge Sieben & Ellen Verbakel & Paul M de Graaf, 2016. "Employment status and subjective well-being: the role of the social norm to work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(2), pages 309-333, April.
    20. Jan C. van Ours, 2021. "What a drag it is getting old? Mental health and loneliness beyond age 50," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(31), pages 3563-3576, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:31:y:2017:i:1:p:71-89. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.