Working time variation, work autonomy, and self-reported Health during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

Why our changing work hours matter for health

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers in China saw their weekly hours rise, fall, and shift in unpredictable ways. This study asks a question that matters to anyone juggling work and life: when our working hours constantly change, does it harm or help our health—and does it make a difference if we can control our own schedules, especially for women who often shoulder heavier family duties?

When the workweek won’t sit still

The researchers focus on “working time variation,” meaning how much a person’s weekly paid hours swing above or below their usual level. This is different from simply working remotely or on shifts—it is about instability in how many hours you work from week to week. Using a large national survey of Chinese adults in 2021, a period still shaped by pandemic disruptions, they calculated how far each worker’s maximum and minimum weekly hours in the past month deviated from their regular schedule. This gave them a concrete measure of how uneven people’s workweeks had become across the country.

Control at work as a safety valve

The key idea in the study is that changing hours are not always bad in themselves. What matters is whether workers have a say in how they respond to those changes. The authors examine “work autonomy,” meaning how much freedom employees feel they have to decide how they do their tasks and manage their time. They split workers into two groups: those with high autonomy and those with low autonomy. High autonomy can turn irregular hours into a kind of useful flexibility—for example, choosing when to work longer or shorter days to fit family needs. Low autonomy, by contrast, means that extra hours or sudden cuts are usually imposed from above, making people feel they are at the mercy of their employer’s demands.

What the numbers reveal about health

The team used statistical models to link working time variation and autonomy to workers’ own ratings of their physical health, on a simple five-point scale from very unhealthy to very healthy. Overall, greater swings in weekly hours were linked to slightly worse self-reported health. This pattern held even after taking into account age, education, job type, income, region, and other background factors, and it remained stable when the authors repeated the analysis with more conservative methods. In other words, people whose hours shifted more from week to week tended to feel less healthy.

How control changes the story, especially for women

The story shifts when work autonomy is added to the picture. For workers with little control over how they work, increasing variation in hours clearly went hand in hand with poorer health. But for those with high autonomy, the negative effect of fluctuating hours was much weaker. Among women, this buffering effect of autonomy was especially strong: women facing large swings in hours but with high control over their work did not see the same health decline as those with low control, and in some cases their health ratings even improved. For men, autonomy offered some protection, but the benefits were smaller and did not fully erase the harm of unstable work time. These gender differences fit with China’s entrenched norms, in which women are more often responsible for childcare and elder care and therefore gain more when they can adjust their work around family needs.

What this means for workers and policy

To a lay reader, the study’s bottom line is straightforward: it is not just how much you work, but how steady your schedule is and how much say you have in shaping it that matters for your health. In today’s world of apps, gig work, and long-hours cultures like China’s informal “996” system, unstable hours without real control are a health risk, particularly for women balancing paid work with heavy family duties. By contrast, when workers are given genuine autonomy—such as flexible start and end times, a voice in scheduling, or more trust-based management—some of the strain of changing hours can be eased. The authors argue that employers and policymakers who want healthier, more resilient workforces should pair flexible arrangements with real decision-making power, and pay special attention to supporting women, rather than assuming that flexibility alone is always a good thing.

Citation: Jing, F.F., Zhu, M., Wang, Q. et al. Working time variation, work autonomy, and self-reported Health during the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 13, 486 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06696-0

Keywords: working hours, job autonomy, worker health, gender differences, China labor market