%0 Report
        %A Costa-Font, Joan
%A Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina
        %T An Overworked Leave?  Health Care Workforce Effects of Brexit
        %D 2025
        %8 2025 May
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 17895
        %U https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp17895
        %X We study the impact of the Brexit referendum on the quality of employment and working conditions of workers in the National Health Service (NHS). We use a difference-in-differences (DiD) design and propensity score matching to compare NHS employees with a control group referring to occupations less exposed to employees from the European Union (EU) before Brexit. We document that Brexit led to the average reduction of job satisfaction by 1.39% - largest for physicians (2.6%) and nurses (2.4%) - and an increase of both paid (1.75 hours/week) and unpaid working hours (8.3 hours/week). Nonetheless, the effect was heterogeneous despite the general rise in working time. Indeed, job satisfaction fell by 2.6% among British workers but increased by 3% among overseas workers. These changes were accompanied by a comparable reduction in leisure time and a higher likelihood of workers intending to leave their jobs, suggesting broader behavioural effects that may undermine NHS productivity.
        %K job satisfaction
%K workforce motivation
%K Brexit
%K health care workforce
%K workforce composition
%K leisure satisfaction
%K NHS.