YOUTH FACTORS AND LABOUR MARKET EXPERIENCE IN JOB SATISFACTION

(2002) - John Bynner, Laura Woods, Neville Butler

Journal: CLS Cohort Studies
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Tags:: #paper #NCDS #LabourMarket #BCS
Cite Key:: [@Bynner2002a]

Abstract

What makes for satisfaction with life in general and with particular facets of life, such as those concerned with work, and counterpart feelings such as negative affect or depression have long been of interest to social scientists. One key question is whether these satisfactions and feelings are all parts of a personal or social predisposition to see things in positive or negative terms or whether we can identify distinct situational factors that underlie different forms of satisfaction. Moreover do these expressions fluctuate spasmodically in accordance with changes in external factors or gradually shift in accordance with long-term changing externalities? This paper focuses on two aspects of the conundrum. First, job satisfaction, compared across cohorts and genders, with a view to establishing what its components really are and whether they are changing. In addition we investigate Malaise, a general expression of a psychological state broadly aligned with what clinical psychologists describe as depression. We link both of these components of psychological state to general life satisfaction – the over arching view we have of our place in the world and our feelings about it.

Notes

“t was also notable that generally scores for both men and women were higher in BCS70 than in NCDS suggesting a greater tendency towards depression in the more recent cohort. However, depression levels in NCDS rose from age 33 to 42 and by 42 were not hugely different from those at age 30 in BCS70. This suggests that over and above the cohort difference, there is also a period effect in the sense that respondents differing in age between 30 and 42 surveyed at the same time (1999/2000) share the same tendency towards enhanced depression.” (Bynner et al., 2002, p. 7)

“These results show some continuity with past findings about job satisfaction and some aspects that do not seem to have been identified in the past. First, it is clear that job satisfaction relates to characteristics of the current job and also location in the labour market: private, public sectors, self-employment and so forth.” (Bynner et al., 2002, p. 16)

“Finally, the components of depression and life satisfaction are influenced by experience early on in life, most obviously educational experience, but also other characteristics of home life, especially the material circumstances of the home” (Bynner et al., 2002, p. 17)