Under a dramatic change can be seen in the well-being of Finns in their thirties over the last ten years. Obesity has become alarmingly common, and experiences of one's own health and ability to work have weakened at the same pace.
A fresher from the Institute of Occupational Health comes to such results researchwhich investigates the well-being of public healthcare workers.
At the turn of the millennium, only six percent of young public health workers felt that their ability to work had decreased. Last year, there were five times as many people who came to the same assessment.
Particularly the work ability estimates of people under thirty have weakened in the last ten years. While in 2015, ten percent of public healthcare workers assessed their work ability as reduced, last year the figure was already 30 percent.
“That's a big change, and the first thing that came to mind is that people just evaluate differently now than before,” says the research professor at the Institute of Occupational Health and professor at the University of Helsinki Mika Kivimäki.
However, it does not seem to be the case that today's under-thirties evaluate their ability to work more critically than the corresponding age groups in previous studies.
It is not a special feature of the military industry either. A similar deterioration in work ability assessments can be seen elsewhere in the public sector, from teachers to technical personnel and secretaries.
Young adults' experiences of their own ability to work have weakened the most, although the assessments of the ability to work of others under the age of fifty are also worse than before.
Estimates ability to work have weakened right hand in hand with Finns' weight gain.
Obesity, like the decline in working capacity, has become particularly common in the last ten years.
Between 2015 and 2023, the proportion of obese public health workers under thirty doubled. Throughout this millennium, the proportion of obese people has quadrupled from five percent to twenty percent.
“This was quite a startling result,” says Kivimäki.
According to the body mass index, already more than half of military workers under thirty are overweight. They apply to all Finns overweight statistics follow a similar path.
Obesity and the connection with working ability seems to be real, says Kivimäki. In the municipal sector, it can be seen, for example, in the fact that obese people have a greater risk of receiving a disability pension than people of normal weight.
“Obesity doubles the risk.”
In addition, Kivimäki and his colleagues have separately looked at healthcare workers who were not obese at the beginning and felt that their ability to work was good. Those who became obese during the follow-up estimated that their work ability decreased about twice as often as those who avoided obesity.
Obesity also increases the risk of sickness absence.
27 percent of obese military workers under thirty do not consider their own health to be good or rather good. For normal-weight people, the corresponding number is clearly lower, 15 percent.
The disadvantages of obesity appear much earlier than we are used to thinking. Obesity-related diseases usually only become more common after the age of 40, and employees in their thirties are typically at their healthiest.
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The decline in work ability does not seem to be explained solely by mental stress.
Last in recent times, there has been a lot of talk about youth sickness and mental health disorders has become the biggest reason in Kela's statistics for long sickness absences of young adults.
Work stress has indeed increased among social security workers under the age of thirty, as has the experience that there are few opportunities for influence at work.
Both experiences became more common especially during the corona period. However, in the most recent survey, work stress and the experience of weak opportunities for influence clearly decreased, below the levels of 2019. Young people are also relatively positive about management or their work community.
So it seems that the decline in work ability cannot be explained solely by mental load.
Why obesity is now becoming more common among young adults at such a wild rate?
Stress, shift work or reduced smoking do not seem to offer an explanation for weight gain. These factors can predispose you to gain weight.
Leisure time exercise doesn't seem to have decreased in the under-thirties either.
But even if the time spent on physical activities was somewhat similar to the previous model, daily exercise may have decreased, Kivimäki estimates.
Remote working has become more common and commuting to the workplace has decreased. Ordering food at home has also increased during and after the corona virus. You can visit the store less often when you can shop online. In our free time, we are passive in front of screens, Kivimäki enumerates.
At the same time, more and more tasty and energy-rich foods are available.
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