Long-term trends in psychosocial working conditions in Europe—the role of labor market policies

BACKGROUND: Employees have witnessed rising trend in work stress over the last few decades. However, we know a little about country differences in those trends. Our article fills this gap in the literature by examining heterogeneities in trends in working conditions by country groups defined by their amount of investment into labor market policy (LMP) programs. Additionally, we provide findings on differences in occupational inequalities between country groups. METHODS: We use comparative longitudinal data of the European Working Conditions Surveys including cross-sectional information on employees from 15 countries surveyed in Waves 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015. Estimation results are provided by three-way multilevel models with employees nested within country-years nested within countries. Our work stress measure is the proxy version of job strain based on the demand-control model. RESULTS: Our regression results indicate that for employees in countries with the least LMP spending job strain increased by 10% from 1995 to 2015 compared to a smaller and insignificant change in middle- and high-LMP countries. In low-LMP countries, inequalities in job strain also widened during the studied period: the gap in job strain between the highest- and lowest-skilled increased by 60% from 1995 to 2015. This contrasts a stable gap in middle- and high-LMP countries. CONCLUSIONS: Our results direct the attention to the vulnerable position of the least skilled and highlight that LMP investments may buffer some of the adverse impacts of globalization and technological changes and effectively improve the labor market situation of the least skilled.