Combining informal caregiving and paid work: effects on labour force participation

Around 1,3 million persons cares for, supports or helps regularly a close person.

Most informal carers are in paid work, yet evidence on the impacts of informal caring on carers’ labour market activities is conflicting and knowledge on mechanisms that are amenable to interventions is lacking.

In this study we aim, based on data drawn from the Swedish Longitudinal Survey of Health (SLOSH) study, to examine the effects of beginning and ceasing caring on carers’ labour force participation (working hours and income, sickness absence and withdrawal from the labour market).

In addition to survey data, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a selective sample of informal carers drawn from the SLOSH study, to explore facilitators and barriers that informal carers experience when combining paid work with provision of informal care. For the quantitative longitudinal analyses, causal modelling will be used.

Attention will be paid on potential mechanisms as well as moderating effects.

One key mechanism may be difficulties for carers to combine demands from work and family, resulting in problems to find time to rest and sleep. Hence, the possible mediating effects of work-family conflict and lack of recovery will be studied.

The work environment may facilitate or hinder combining caring with paid work, consequently, moderators such as work demands, social support, and work-time control, but also gender and age, will be considered.

In the qualitative analysis, we will focus on whether health and care services and employers provide the help and respite that informal caregivers need in order to combine caregiving duties and work; or whether strain from dealing with the bureaucracy impinges on caregivers’ burden.

Improved knowledge about the compatibility of informal caring with labour force participation could inform workplace interventions as well as society more widely, on how to improve possibilities for carers to remain in the labour force.