Casual catastrophe or contentment: is casual employment related to ill-health in young South Australians?

Abstract

The past two decades have seen Australia experience a trend of workforce casualisation, which is particularly high amongst young people, alongside claims that casual employment is a form of low-quality employment that erodes workers’ physical and mental health. Although current literature in this area is growing, it is still dominated by international research that is not easily generalisable to the Australian context, and is characterised by simplistic measurements of employment status that may not adequately capture its complexities. This study used a cross-sectional sample of 453 recent South Australian school-leavers, aged 19–20 years, to examine the relationship between employment status (casual, permanent or full-time study) and ill-health in young people. Job insecurity, job dissatisfaction, financial strain and low social support were tested as moderators and as a means to move beyond only taxonomic measures of employment status. The results indicated that employment status was not associated with ill-health. No interaction between employment status and the moderator variables was found. Instead, the moderator variables alone were better predictors of non-optimal mental health and job stress. The results suggest that for young people at least casual employment is not associated with poorer health.

Keywords:

• casual work
• health
• youth
• moderator

Acknowledgments

We thank the young men and women who took the time to participate.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the Australian Research Council [grant number A00104359], [grant number DP0556377], and [grant number DP0879497].

Notes on contributors

Natalie Matthews

Natalie Matthews is currently enrolled in a combined masters/PhD in Organisational Psychology & Human Factors at the University of Adelaide. Her PhD research concerns casual employment and health and well-being in young, South Australian workers. This topic was an initiative of SafeWork South Australia, who issued top-up scholarships for candidates who researched an issue that aligned with SafeWork’s research agenda.

Paul Delfabbro

Paul Delfabbro is a professor at the University of Adelaide. His principal research interests have been in the areas of gambling and risk-taking, out-of-home care and child protection. More recently he has examined the relationship between clinical pathology/psychological morbidity and people’s susceptibility to cognitive biases, illusions and erroneous beliefs. He has published around 200 papers, reports and book chapters in these areas and has been a chief investigator on almost 60 grants and consultancies with both state and federal government funding bodies.

Anthony Winefield

Anthony Winefield is Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University of South Australia and Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of Adelaide. He has published in the areas of learned helplessness, youth unemployment and job stress. He has published more than 200 refereed journal articles, 7 books and 30 book chapters and given more than 170 conference papers.