[UK] Work demands and stress levels are going up alongside pay

New research from the Resolution Foundation team has revealed that job satisfaction hasn’t been falling and four out of five of us think our job is “helpful to others”, The Guardian reports.

However, the research also showed that those averages hide job satisfaction drops among low earners, whose work has become more stressful and intense in recent decades.

Hours are not the sole measure of how hard we work. New research from the IZA Institute - examining how workers’ time in the US is used - provides more finite detail. It shows that a lack of frequent “on-the-job leisure episodes” (or breaks) raises workers’ stress levels. Particularly bad news because the past four decades saw uninterrupted working time increase by 7 per cent in the US, raising stress significantly.

What is the significance for the UK? This might help to explain why job satisfaction among low earners is down despite the national minimum wage (possibly the biggest policy success this century) raising their pay faster than the rest of us over the past two decades and cutting low pay rates back to levels not seen since the 1970s.

Firms facing rising wage costs as a result of big increases in the minimum wage responded in a number of ways. One, covered in a new report from the Low Pay Commission (which oversees the minimum wage) was to increase work intensity instead of raising productivity in better ways (such as investing in new equipment). Therefore the task for British policymakers and British firms is to get pay up and stress down.

Source: The Guardian

(Links via original reporting)

New research from the Resolution Foundation team has revealed that job satisfaction hasn’t been falling and four out of five of us think our job is “helpful to others”, The Guardian reports.

However, the research also showed that those averages hide job satisfaction drops among low earners, whose work has become more stressful and intense in recent decades.

Hours are not the sole measure of how hard we work. New research from the IZA Institute - examining how workers’ time in the US is used - provides more finite detail. It shows that a lack of frequent “on-the-job leisure episodes” (or breaks) raises workers’ stress levels. Particularly bad news because the past four decades saw uninterrupted working time increase by 7 per cent in the US, raising stress significantly.

What is the significance for the UK? This might help to explain why job satisfaction among low earners is down despite the national minimum wage (possibly the biggest policy success this century) raising their pay faster than the rest of us over the past two decades and cutting low pay rates back to levels not seen since the 1970s.

Firms facing rising wage costs as a result of big increases in the minimum wage responded in a number of ways. One, covered in a new report from the Low Pay Commission (which oversees the minimum wage) was to increase work intensity instead of raising productivity in better ways (such as investing in new equipment). Therefore the task for British policymakers and British firms is to get pay up and stress down.

Source: The Guardian

(Links via original reporting)