Are Quebecers More Stressed Out at Work than Others? A Follow-up Study on the Differences between Quebec, Ontario and the Rest of Canada in Level of Perceived Work Stress

Abstract

Work stress can decrease productivity and create economic losses. People with long-term work stress are likely to suffer other illnesses. Using microdata from the 2015-2016 Canadian Community Health Survey: annual component, this paper investigates the impact of several potential determinants of work stress across regions of Canada. The paper is a follow-up of a previous study by Sedigh, Devlin and Grenier (2017) that pointed out that Quebecers are more likely to report high work stress than other Canadians. The main findings of this paper are different from those of that study. While Quebecers showed a 4.4 percentage point higher probability of having high work stress than Ontarians, residents of Ontario are as stressful at work as Quebecers after controlling for personal, work, family, and health and behaviour characteristics. An Oaxaca decomposition between Quebec and Ontario shows that the difference in work stress can be explained by differences in characteristics. However, living in Quebec is still persistently associated with higher work stress compared with people who live in the other provinces and an Oaxaca decomposition shows that the difference is unexplained by differences in characteristics.