Research on non-standard employment often portrays it as inherently precarious and harmful to worker well-being, yet empirical findings remain mixed. One reason is that prior studies frequently conflate employment arrangements with job quality and treat health as a singular outcome. Using pooled data from six waves of the General Social Survey between 2002 and 2022, this study examines how non-standard employment relates to multiple dimensions of well-being among employed working-age adults, distinguishing between work-related strain and cumulative mental health outcomes. Across models, non-standard employment is associated with lower reported levels of work-related stress and a lower likelihood of feeling “used up” at work. By contrast, non-standard employment shows no association with broader indicators of cumulative mental health burden, measured as days of poor mental health in the past month. Across outcomes, job security and decision authority are robust predictors of well-being. For example, a one-unit increase in perceived job security is associated with approximately one fewer day of poor mental health per month. Supplementary analyses further show that non-standard employment is not associated with higher job security and is associated with lower levels of decision authority. Overall, these findings suggest that non-standard employment is not uniformly detrimental to well-being and that its consequences depend on the outcomes considered, underscoring the need to distinguish employment arrangements from the conditions under which work is performed.

Authors:
Hazel Chui, Independent Scholar, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Hazel Chui is an independent researcher whose interests include organizational sociology, management, and labor, with current work examining how non-standard employment and job quality shape worker well-being.

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