“Being in poor-quality work which, perhaps, is boring, routine or represents underemployment or a poor match for the employee’s skills is widely regarded as a good way for the unemployed to remain connected to the labor market — and to keep the work habit. But Butterworth’s data contradicts this.
The HILDA data shows unambiguously that the psychosocial quality of bad jobs is worse than unemployment. Butterworth looked at those moving from unemployment into employment and found that:
Those who moved into optimal jobs showed significant improvement in mental health compared to those who remained unemployed.
Those respondents who moved into poor-quality jobs showed a significant worsening in their mental health compared to those who remained unemployed.”
