What matters more for employees' mental health : job quality or job quantity?

Recent debates about whether the standard full-time working week (35-40 hours) can bereplaced by a shorter working week have received extensive attention. Using 2015 EuropeanWorking Conditions Survey data, this study contributes to these debates by exploring therelationships between job quantity, job quality and employees’ mental health. Overall, we findthat a job’s quality matters more than its quantity as measured in hours per week. The resultsshow that actual working hours are hardly related to employees’ mental health but job quality,especially intrinsically meaningful work, less intensified work and having a favorable socialenvironment, has positive effects on employee mental health, even in jobs with short workinghours. Moreover, although working less than one prefers (under-employment) has negativeeffects, these negative effects become much smaller in size and non-significant in good qualityjobs, especially in jobs with skill discretion and good job prospects. These findings develop thedebates about a shorter standard working week by emphasizing the continued and crucialimportance of job quality in debates on the future of work. These results also suggest that policymakers should pay particular attention to job quality when addressing the dramatic reduction intotal hours of employment in Europe following the COVID-19 crisis