Looming job loss could affect health of elderly workers

Recession seems to have become a global problem with more and more people getting unemployed. A study claims that downsizing and demotions at a workplace could be a health issue for people who are more than 50 years.

A team of scientists found that job uncertainty appeared to augment the possibility of damaging consequences for a sample of older workers in Cook County, IL. In due course, men supposedly responded with bigger physical symptoms, while alterations in psychological health appeared to be more observed in women.

Lead author Ariel Kalil, PhD, a professor at the University of Chicago, commented, “Older adults in the United States are living longer and working harder. Increased exposure to the labor market brings increased exposure to employment challenges.”

The new discoveries are said to be based on a study of around 200 residents of Cook County aged 50 to 67. The volunteers were believed to have experienced job uncertainty if they accounted that they were disciplined or demoted at work or if their employer downsized or reorganized.

Job insecurity was supposedly not linked to health outcomes for all people evenly. Following a period of roughly two years, the men who seemed to have experienced job uncertainty were more expected to go through poorer self-rated health, higher blood pressure, and higher levels of epinephrine which is a stress-induced hormone. When confronted with the same workplace settings, women apparently exhibited elevated levels of unfriendliness, isolation, and depressive symptoms.

The study authors opted to concentrate on older workers for many reasons. People aged 55 and older appeared to have undergone powerful development in the labor market since the past 20 years, a trend anticipated to carry on in the decade ahead. Moreover, a 2007 AARP study discovered that a sum of 70 percent of working adults between 45 and 74 years old apparently intended to work during retirement or to never retire at all.

The study was published in the Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences.