Table 1

Descriptive statistics: SF-36 health attributes and employment type

	Men			Women
	Mean/proportion	95% CI	N	Mean/proportion	95% CI	N
Health attributes (mean, 0–100 scale)
Physical functioning	90.75	90.61 to 90.89	53 609	89.24	89.09 to 89.39	49 402
Role physical	89.04	88.81 to 89.26	53 798	85.92	85.66 to 86.19	49 482
Bodily pain	78.02	77.85 to 78.19	54 010	76.32	76.14 to 76.51	49 656
General health	71.21	71.05 to 71.36	53 890	72.31	72.15 to 72.48	49 393
Vitality	63.38	63.23 to 63.53	54 290	59.38	59.21 to 59.55	49 885
Social functioning	88.18	88.02 to 88.33	54 644	85.54	85.36 to 85.71	50 173
Role emotional	89.99	89.78 to 90.21	53 763	87.1	86.85 to 87.35	49 468
Mental health	76.49	76.36 to 76.62	54 288	74.63	74.5 to 74.77	49 900
Employment type (proportion in %)*
Permanent	64.2	63.79 to 64.61	33 773	63.86	63.43 to 64.29	30 852
Casual	8.73	8.49 to 8.97	4592	15.11	14.79 to 15.43	7299
Fixed term	7.34	7.12 to 7.57	3863	9.37	9.12 to 9.64	4528
Self-employed	19.36	19.03 to 19.7	10 187	11.1	10.82 to 11.38	5361
Other	0.36	0.32 to 0.42	191	0.56	0.5 to 0.63	272
Total	100		52 606	100		48 312
Employment type, regular/irregular (proportion in %)*†
Permanent, regular	62.77	62.35 to 63.18	33 015	62.52	62.09 to 62.96	30 205
Permanent, irregular	1.44	1.34 to 1.54	757	1.33	1.23 to 1.44	644
Casual, regular	8.09	7.86 to 8.32	4254	14	13.69 to 14.31	6763
Casual, irregular	0.64	0.58 to 0.71	337	1.11	1.02 to 1.21	536
Fixed term, regular	7.15	6.93 to 7.37	3761	9.15	8.89 to 9.41	4419
Fixed term, irregular	0.19	0.16 to 0.23	101	0.23	0.19 to 0.27	109
Self-employed, regular	18.92	18.59 to 19.26	9952	10.9	10.62 to 11.18	5265
Self-employed, irregular	0.44	0.39 to 0.5	232	0.2	0.16 to 0.24	96
Other, regular	0.35	0.3 to 0.4	182	0.54	0.48 to 0.61	261
Other, irregular	0.02	0.01 to 0.03	9	0.02	0.01 to 0.04	11
Total	100		52 600	100		48 309

*The underlying sample for the bottom two panels is the one in which all eight health attributes were non-missing.
†Due to missingness in the regular/irregular variable, further observations are lost—six for men and three for women.