Our study bridges literatures on the health effects of job loss and life course employment trajectories to evaluate the selection into employment pathways and their associations with health in the short and medium terms. We apply sequence analysis to monthly employment calendars from a population-based sample of working-age women and men observed from 2009 to 2013 (N = 737). We identify six distinct employment status clusters: stable full-time employment, stable part-time employment, stably being out of the labor force, long-term unemployment, transition out of the labor force, and unstable full-time employment. After adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics and health at baseline, those who transitioned out of the labor force showed significantly poorer self-rated health at follow-up, whereas steadily part-time employed respondents still showed a greater risk of meeting criteria for major or minor depression. The findings have important implications for how social scientists conceptualize and model the relationship between employment status and health.
Keywords: disparities; employment; recession; trajectory.