Canadian and irish Researchers Find that Older, Rural Workers Satisfied with Non-standard Work

Researchers studying urban and rural workers in Newfoundland, Ontario and Ireland report that the non-standard work often called a "dead-end job" has little impact on the happiness of older rural workers. Of all older (40 plus) rural workers, a majority were found to hold jobs other than year-round, full-time positions--including long- and short-distance commuters, part-time, seasonal, self-employed, early retirees--and generally these workers report being satisfied with their work-life balance, and even those supposedly holding "jobs of moderate or lower quality tend to make the best of their jobs and focus more on their non-working lives."

The researchers were led by Gordon Cooke, an associate professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and they presented in two papers at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, one by Sara Man of the University of Guelph and one co-presented with Deidre Hutchings, MBA student at Memorial University of Newfoundland. According to an article in the Vancouver Sun:

Using a massive Statistics Canada employment survey database including 25,000 employees in 6,000 workplaces, they found that just 6.8 per cent of 40-plus workers hold unskilled jobs with low pay and benefits. Seventeen per cent work in jobs with non-standard hours, but they have high levels of job satisfaction, ranking themselves an average of 3.3 out of 4.

Sources: CNW Group Press Release (June 3, 2011); Vancouver Sun "Older, rural workers OK with non-standard jobs, research shows" (June 5, 2011)