Table 1 Percentage prevalence of psychological distress after employment transitions.

Transition type	Number of transitions	Experiencing financial difficulties/improvements (%)	Experiencing pyschological distress (%)
Transition from employment to*		Percentage worse off financially	Overall	Not worse off financially	Worse off financially
Unemployment	1390	71.3	43.4	28.6	49.4
Retirement	798	53.1	20.7	17.6	23.3
Family care†	1187	47.5	36.7	29.9	44.3
Stayed employed	47370	23.1	23.2	19.3	36.2
Transition to employment from*		Percentage better off financially	Overall	Not better off financially	Better off financially
Unemployment	1346	62.3	25.6	35.4	19.6
Family care†	399	25.3	23.1	22.5	24.7
Stayed non‐employed	31136	15.1	29.6	30.0	27.5

*A total of 51 534 transitions from employment to non‐employment occurred; 789 transitions were into categories that were not a focus of this study: fulltime student (n = 407), long‐term illness (n = 285), government training (n = 42), something else (n = 55). A total of 35 398 transitions were from non‐employment to employment; 2517 transitions were from categories that were not a focus of this study: fulltime students (n = 1076), retirement (n = 212), long‐term illness (n = 105), government training (n = 123), something else (n = 127).

†Family care applies only to women and includes maternity leave or staying at home to look after the family.