The effects of industrial employment conditions on job-related distress

This paper examines the interaction between the effects of industrial unemployment and job conditions on workers' levels of psychological distress. Previous research finds that economic stress, defined as contexts of high unemployment, mainly affects distress indirectly through deteriorating job conditions. However, adaptive cost and identity salience hypotheses predict that the effects of industrial- and job-level conditions interact. I test for cross-level interactions between industrial unemployment and job demands and complexity using hierarchical linear modeling, individual data for 7,095 workers from the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households, and industry data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 1986-1988 Current Population Surveys. Economic stress at the industrial level has a direct positive effect on worker distress, and economic stress is more distressing to workers in rewarding, complex jobs. In contrast, job demands increase distress, but this effect does not interact with industrial employment conditions.