Study: Job satisfaction in your 20s and 30s has a significant impact on your physical and mental health in your 40s

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worker-brainsEar­ly job sat­is­fac­tion has strong link to men­tal health (Learn­ing & Devel­op­ment Professional):

“…the study found job sat­is­fac­tion in your late 20s and 30s has a link to over­all health in your ear­ly 40s.

While job sat­is­fac­tion had some impact on phys­i­cal health, researchers found its effect was espe­cial­ly strong for men­tal health.

Those “less than hap­py” with their work ear­ly in their careers said they were more depressed, wor­ried and strug­gled with sleep…“We found that there is a cumu­la­tive effect of job sat­is­fac­tion on health that appears as ear­ly as your 40s,” said Jonathan Dirlam, lead author of the study and a doc­tor­al stu­dent in soci­ol­o­gy at The Ohio State University.

Zheng said the results showed the impor­tance that ear­ly jobs have on peo­ple’s lives.”

Study: Lousy jobs hurt your health by the time you’re in your 40s (release by Ohio State University)

  • Descrip­tion: The researchers used data from 6,432 Amer­i­cans who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Nation­al Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Sur­vey of Youth 1979, which fol­lowed adults who were between the ages of 14 and 22 when the sur­vey began in 1979. For this study, the researchers exam­ined job sat­is­fac­tion tra­jec­to­ries for peo­ple from age 25 to 39. These par­tic­i­pants then report­ed a vari­ety of health mea­sures after they turned 40. About 45 per­cent of par­tic­i­pants had con­sis­tent­ly low job sat­is­fac­tion, while anoth­er 23 per­cent had lev­els that were trend­ing down­ward through their ear­ly career. About 15 per­cent of peo­ple were con­sis­tent­ly hap­py at their jobs (near­ly 4 on the scale) and about 17 per­cent were trend­ing upward. Using those who were con­sis­tent­ly hap­py as the ref­er­ence, the researchers com­pared how the health of the oth­er three groups compared.

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