3. Inadequate employment is also associated with poor health outcomes.

An important breakthrough in work/health research makes the critical point that simple comparisons between the health of people working and those who are unemployed fail to capture the complexity of the range of individuals’ experiences in the labor force. Indeed, in 1999, only a third of California workers held what many would consider "traditional" jobs (i.e., single full-time jobs year-round, working a day shift as permanent employees).¹⁶ To expand the breadth of research linking health and employment, Dooley, Fielding and Levi¹⁷ identified a typology of work experience reflective of individuals’ changing work patterns that merit more research attention. Rather than a simple dichotomy between employment and unemployment, the researchers proposed a continuum of employment ranging from overemployment (too much overtime, holding multiple jobs) to long-term unemployment. Between these extremes are a number of categories such as underemployment (working fewer hours than desired or for incomes less than education and training would predict) and contingent employment (working on a temporary or contract basis). Some research has begun to focus on categories within this typology. Dooley and Prause, for example, found that underemployment, similar to unemployment, results in increased alcohol consumption but at less extreme levels than unemployment.¹⁸