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Unsurprisingly, Your Job Can Affect Your Health

Frustrated Businesswoman on TelephoneA poll of working adults in the U.S. by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was conducted to examine workers’ perceptions of health problems, experiences, issues, and challenges in the workplace.

Researchers found:

Their job affects their overall health for more than four in 10 working adults (28% good impact; 16% bad impact), their stress level (16% good; 43% bad), and family life (32% good; 17% bad).

Workers in low-paying jobs face dangerous work situations (45%) compared to those in high-paying jobs (33%), and find work has a bad impact on stress (51%) compared to those in average and high-paying jobs (41%).

One in five workers (19%) are “workaholics,” working 50 or more hours a week in their main job. They do so because they say it is important to their career (56%); and that their workload makes it hard to take a vacation (49%).

Black working adults give their workplace fair or poor ratings (37%) on providing a healthy work environment, compared to Hispanic (26%) and white workers (21%).

Women are more likely while working to have cared for a family member who was seriously ill, injured, or disabled (33%), compared to men (24%); blacks more likely (41%) to have done so than whites (28%) or Hispanics (20%).

A majority of workers (55%) go to work when sick; including medical workers (60%) and restaurant workers (50%) who go to work when they have a cold or flu.

For most workers, the workplace provides a healthy work environment (75%) and offers formal wellness or health improvement programs (51%).

Download the report here.