Smoking may hamper your job prospects too

NEW YORK: Young smokers please take note! Smokers face more problems in finding a job and when they do find a job, they earn considerably less than their non-smoker peers, says an interesting study.



The findings showed that at 12 months, only 27 percent of smokers had found jobs compared with 56 percent of non-smokers. Among those who had found jobs by 12 months, smokers earned on average 5 US dollars less per hour than non-smokers.

"We found that smokers had a much harder time finding work than non-smokers," said lead study author Judith Prochaska from Stanford University Medical Center in the US.

"The health harms of smoking have been established for decades and our study here provides insight into the financial harms of smoking both in terms of lower re-employment success and lower wages," Prochaska added in a paper published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

Emotional suffering in young age can lead to unemployment

Smokers are on average younger, less educated and in poorer health than non-smokers. Those who successfully quit smoking will have an easier time getting hired, the authors suggested.