Background Precarious employment relationships impact many facets of society, among them health and health inequities for workers and their families. The objective of the current analyses was to investigate the association between precarious employment and access to social and health employment benefits in the Canadian context.

Methods The General Social Survey (GSS) is an annual and national cross-sectional survey administered by Statistics Canada. The GSS2016 focused on social trends in education, work and home conditions to inform policy issues. The association between employment status (regular versus seasonal, term, casual) and access to employment benefits (pension, sick leave, vacation, disability, workers’ compensation, parental leave, supplemental medical, and other) was investigated using multivariable logistic regression, adjusted for socio-demographic (age, sex, education, visible minority, immigrant), occupation and industry, and physical and mental disability characteristics.

Results Among those employed at the time of the survey (60.4% of 19 609 respondents), the majority had regular (80.8%) versus precarious seasonal (7.0%), casual (6.9%), or term (5.3%) employment. Twenty-eight percent of precarious workers reported no employment benefits compared to 6% of regular workers (ORadj=4.99, 95% CI 3.53, 7.05). By type of benefit, the greatest disparity between precarious employment and no benefits was reported for disability insurance (ORadj=2.45 95% CI 1.81, 3.32) and supplemental medical benefits (ORadj=2.54 95% CI 1.90, 3.38), while the least disparity was reported for workers’ compensation benefits (ORadj=1.46 95% CI 1.11, 1.92).

Discussion Precarious work may equate to precarious living for a significant number of workers without pension, disability, sick leave, family or medical employment benefits. The impact of the observed disparity in employment benefits for workers with regular versus precarious attachment to the labour market warrants longer-term investigation, but the findings suggest that precarious work could be a significant social determinant of health.