Job Insecurity Damages Relationships

An Australian study has revealed that professionals who have stressful jobs, little control at work and low levels of job security have much poorer relationships with their partners.

Liana Leach and Peter Butterworth from the Australian National University used data from a large representative community sample of 40- to 44-year-old professional workers in marriage-like relationships to investigate the link between "psychosocial" job characteristics and relationship quality.

"People talk about work-family balance all the time but a lot of it is pretty anecdotal, so to be able to say there is evidence that these stressful jobs affect people's relationships is important," Ms Leach said. "It's a fairly robust association we found."

Job insecurity, short-term contracts and casual work are the factors proportionally associated with having less positive interactions at home with your intimate partner, so a poorer-quality relationship with fewer positive things, like spending time together, sharing ideas ... that kind of thing.