Work and Wellbeing - Exploring Inequalities

There is clear evidence that work and wellbeing are closely intertwined. However, recent years have seen huge changes to the labour market in the UK – stagnating wage levels, a rise in various forms of insecure working, and a ‘hollowing out’ of the market, with fewer mid-level jobs while both the lower-skill, lower-wage and higher-skill ends of the market have expanded. These changes have profound implications for the future relationship between work and wellbeing, and for the ability of people across the UK to access ‘fulfilling work’.

The Carnegie UK Trust commissioned Ipsos Scotland to provide evidence on how different aspects of ‘fulfilling work’ are experienced by people across different demographic groups, regions and industry sectors. A report of our findings (PDF) and a discussion paper (PDF) based around these are both available from the Carnegie UK Trust’s website. Key findings include:

• Young people are more likely to be low-paid, on zero hours contracts, underemployed in terms of hours, and dissatisfied with their sense of achievement from work.
• Disabled people are both less likely to be employed, and when they are they face significant inequality. They are more likely to be low-paid, to be underemployed, to report difficulties balancing work and non-work commitments, to be dissatisfied with their sense of achievement in their work, and to score lower on measures of engagement with the organisation they work for.
• While sectors that score low on one measure of ‘fulfilling work’ do not necessarily score low on others, those working in hotels, restaurants and related services appear disadvantaged across many of the measures considered, including income, unpredictable hours, underemployment, and work-life balance.
• Defining and measuring ‘fulfilling work’ is complex – its component elements do not always fit together in the ways you might expect. For example, people may be objectively relatively well paid and on ‘good’ contracts, but at the same time feel dissatisfied with their opportunities for development, influence over their job, and their work-life balance. Any policies that seek to influence ‘fulfilling work’ as a whole will need to take these complexities into account.