Job Alienation and Well-Being

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationships between alienation conceived as monotonous, repetitive work and alienation as job-worker incongruence to a variety of measures of worker well-being among a population of workers from Victoria, British Columbia. The data show weak relationships between work perceived as monotonous and general psychological and physical well-being and between alienation as job-worker incongruence and health. While weak in variance-explained terms, the relationships show the predicted patterns are robust and are independent of a large number of control variables. Percentage differences in well-being between the alienated and nonalienated workers are fairly substantial. Some societal implications of the findings are discussed.