Anyone who's been pushed out of a job knows it's not great for your self-esteem. Now, a new study finds it's not great for your long-term health, either.

The new research finds that workers who lose their jobs when their company goes belly up are more likely to suffer from heart disease, strokes, diabetes or stress. And finding a new job quickly doesn't mean they return to the picture of health.

Kate Strully, an assistant professor in sociology at the State University of New York at Albany and the author of a new study, looked at U.S. employment data from 1999, 2001, and 2003 using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

Among those who lost their job through no fault of their own because their workplace relocated or folded altogether, the odds of their reporting "fair or poor" health after their job loss increased by 54 per cent.

Even those workers who had no pre-existing health conditions while they were working had an 83 per cent chance of reporting they had developed a new chronic health condition after they lost their job.

The paper will be published in the May issue of the journal, Demography.

Strully notes that job loss can disrupt many aspects of one's life beyond income, affecting one's social standing and self-worth.

"Our job pervades so much of who we are and how we live," she told CTV.ca in a phone interview from Albany. "Jobs are so fundamental to our daily lives and our position in society, your class position and your role with your family.

She said that those who find themselves suddenly unemployed not only have to deal with the stress of figuring out how to make up their lost income, but many don't know what to do with themselves.

"When someone loses a job, they lose their daily rhythm in their lives. Suddenly they're not going through their routines of getting up and going to work. Their role in the community and family may change. They may be forced to relocate to a new town to find work. So there are so many disruptions."

Plenty of previous studies have noted the link between unemployment and poor health. But it was never clear in those studies whether it was job loss that made people sicker, or whether people who are chronically sick or had unreported health problems were more likely to lose their jobs.

That distinction is important, she said, because health problems that make a worker less productive could lead to them being fired or laid off.

So Strully decided to focus just on those workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own, because their entire workplace was let go.

Her study found that even those who found a new job quickly still had an increased risk of reporting new stress-related health conditions afterward. That finding is significant, she said, since the working world has changed and most workers no longer get a job at 18 and stay with that company until they retire.

"Companies that want to keep up in a competitive global economy need to be free to merge and restructure and lay off as needed. But along with that goes a lot of job loss," Strully said.

"It's assumed that that is not problematic for workers, providing we're creating new jobs for them to move into. But I wanted to know if it really was a harmless as some suggest."

She found that those who lost their jobs had a higher risk of reporting they had developed conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, diabetes and even arthritis.

"These health conditions are widely recognized as being sensitive to psychological stress," she said.

"Under stress, our inflammation responses get revved up and that can cause sort of 'wear and tear' over time."

Strully said it didn't matter whether the workers had "blue collar" hands-on jobs, or "white collar" jobs, such as managerial or sales postings; the effects of job loss on their health were consisted throughout.

"In today's economy, job loss can happen to anybody," she said. "We need to be aware of the health consequences of losing our jobs and do what we can to alleviate the negative effects."