Employment Quality as a Determinant of Occupational Stress and Worker Well-Being in Transforming Contemporary Labor Markets
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Abstract
This paper examines the relationships between job quality, occupational stress, and worker well-being in contemporary labor markets. It adopts a multidimensional perspective in which employment quality is assessed not only through wages and contractual status but also through employment security, working-time arrangements, autonomy, worker voice, psychosocial conditions, organizational support, and opportunities for development. Particular attention is given to the expansion of precarious employment, platform work, remote work, algorithmic management, and digitally mediated forms of labor, which can simultaneously increase flexibility and generate new forms of insecurity, surveillance, work intensification, and boundary erosion. The paper also analyzes the mechanisms through which job demands, effort–reward imbalance, limited control, organizational injustice, bullying, emotional labor, and technostress influence workers’ psychological well-being. Conversely, autonomy, psychological safety, meaningful work, supportive leadership, and adequate organizational resources are identified as important protective factors. The synthesis further shows that interventions focused solely on individual coping are insufficient when occupational stress originates from structural and organizational working conditions. Improving worker well-being therefore requires integrated policies combining organizational reform, appropriate labor regulation, social protection, worker participation, and accessible individual support. The paper consequently argues for a broader assessment of labor-market performance in which job quality constitutes a central dimension alongside employment quantity.
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References
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