The relationship between precarious employment and subjective well-being in Korean wage workers through the Cantril ladder Scale.

Background: The global labor market is moving towards increasing job instability. Relatively few studies have examined the relationship between precarious employment and subjective well-being using quantitative scales. We evaluated the association between wage workers' employment status and their subjective well-being through the Cantril ladder scale using Korean Welfare Panel Survey data (KOWEPS).

Methods: This study used KOWEPS data. A total of 4,423 wage workers were divided into permanently employed workers, temporarily employed workers and daily employed workers. The relationship between precarious employment and subjective well-being was analyzed by multiple linear regression adjusted for potential confounding factors.

Results: The more unstable the employment status, the lower the subjective well-being, which can be expressed by the Cantril ladder scale. The mean score of both temporarily employed and daily employed workers were statistically significantly lower (B = -0.454, < 0.001; B = -0.994, < 0.001, respectively) than permanently employed workers. This appeared to be the same when occupational and sociodemographic factors were adjusted (B = -0.153, = 0.002 for temporarily employed, B = -0.610, < 0.001 for daily employed).

Conclusions: The more unstable the employment status, the lower the subjective well-being score according to the Cantril ladder scale.