Well-being and healthcare work over the pandemic

Well-being in the healthcare sector is of substantial policy relevance, given persistent labour shortages and the central role of subjective well-being in worker productivity and retention.

We investigate changes in healthcare workers' life satisfaction since the onset of the pandemic relative to workers in other essential and non-essential sectors, and examine the role of pandemic severity and subsequent policy responses in explaining these differences.

We use thirteen waves of quarterly panel data from the COME-HERE dataset, which collects information on respondents in five European countries from April 2020 to August 2024, and estimate linear regressions via OLS.

The life satisfaction of healthcare workers is always higher than that of other essential workers and non-essential workers. During the pandemic, the pandemic death rate had a negative effect on life satisfaction that was three times larger for healthcare workers. At the same time, lockdown stringency reduced the life satisfaction of workers in every sector other than healthcare.

As pandemic death rates and lockdown stringency mostly moved hand-in-hand, the higher life satisfaction of healthcare workers persisted throughout and after the pandemic possibly reflecting the meaningful nature of their jobs. At the same time, the negative impact of pandemic severity on workers' well-being is especially pronounced among healthcare workers, highlighting the importance of supporting their well-being during public health crises to sustain healthcare system performance.