The Expanding Domains of Degraded Work in the United States: Constructing a More Comprehensive Typology of Non-standard Employment Arrangements

Abstract

The spread of non-standard employment (NSE) is widely considered to have contributed to the deterioration of labor standards. Yet, in the United States, there is no definitive roster of non-standard work arrangements and no reliable estimate of the size of the non-standard workforce. For over 25 years, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has produced artificially low estimates of employers’ use of ‘alternative employment arrangements’. Its 2018 Contingent Work Supplement (CWS) reported that since 1995 the proportion of US workers in these arrangements had declined. This article proposes a more systematic framework for understanding NSE in the United States and fleshes out a more comprehensive typology better suited toward addressing the needs of policymakers and labor activists. It fundamentally reorients the study of NSE by recognizing that so-called ‘alternative’ arrangements are abusive and more aptly understood as degraded work arrangements (DWAs). The article then explores the key categories of DWAs and provides a deeper analysis of one group, dissociative arrangements, that enable the flourishing use of ‘non-employee’ workers. Concluding sections address the undertheorized state of this subject area and the challenge of union organizing in fractured labor markets.