A badly-paid or temporary job can be as bad for mental health as no job at all, research has suggested.

In fact, people who are unemployed can feel better-off mentally than those who are in poor jobs of low “psychosocial quality”, the report added.

Researchers said government policies tend to focus on job seekers when they should also take into account the quality of a person’s job.

Writing in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, experts led by a team at the Australian National University in Canberra said: “This study has shown that work of poor psychosocial quality, characterised by low job control, high job demands and complexity, job insecurity and the perception of unfair pay, does not bestow the same mental health benefits as employment in jobs with high psychosocial quality.

“In fact, we found that moving from unemployment to a job with poor psychosocial quality was associated with a significant decline in mental health relative to remaining unemployed.

“This suggests that psychosocial job quality is a pivotal factor that needs to be considered in the design and delivery of employment and welfare policy.”

Studies have long found that people in work enjoy better mental health than those who are unemployed.

But fewer studies have examined how people feel about their jobs when they are in employment.

Researchers analysed data from more than 7,000 people in Australia and found well-being was very much dependent on the quality of the job.