It’s well known that starting your career in a recession has a detrimental effect on your career, whether in terms of your overall career progression or your lifetime earnings.  Sadly, new research from Northwestern University highlights how the impact does not stop there.  It reveals that entering the labor market during a recession can be so damaging that it knocks a few years off of our life expectancy.

Millions of young people began entering the labor market during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and the researchers set out to explore just what impact this had on their lives and careers.  The impact of entering the labor market during a recession on one’s lifetime earnings is fairly well, but the impact on everything from your marriage prospects to your life expectancy is all the more shocking.

Life chances

Indeed, the analysis suggests that the life chances of those starting work during a recession were impacted as early as their 30s.  The data found that those entering the workforce during the recession of the early 1980s were showing increased mortality as early as their 30s, with even more pronounced effects by their 50s.

The poor mortality chances of these people was partly due to greater likelihood of diseases such as lung cancer, as well as liver disease and drug abuse, which are collectively known as ‘diseases of despair’.  While previous research about the decline in income caused by starting work in a recession suggests the impact eventually fades, the health impact seems far more enduring.

“Our study is the first to examine the effect of entering the labor market in a recession on mortality,” the researchers say. “Our findings demonstrate that temporary disadvantages in the labor market during young adulthood can have substantial impacts on lifetime outcomes, can affect life and death in middle age, and go beyond the transitory initial career effects typically studied.”

The economic recession of 1981 and 1982 was the biggest recession since the Great Depression, before the 2007 crash took its place.  It therefore represents a good means of seeing the impacts across a wide range of metrics.

A bad start

The stats revealed that getting a poor start to your career has clear financial implications, with people typically earning less, but what was perhaps most interesting is that these people were also less likely to be married, with those who were married more likely to be divorced.

It builds on previous work showing that women exposed to recessions in their early adult years even suffered from lower fertility levels.

“Overall, these findings raise concerns that entering the labor market in a recession may have larger consequences than current estimates on earnings suggest,” the researchers conclude. “Yet, so far these broader and longer-term effects have not been the focus of the literature on recession entrants.”