The geography of nonstandard employment across U.S. metropolitan areas

Abstract

ABSTRACT The U.S. nonstandard workforce remained at around 10% of the total employed population for the past decades, although the subnational levels reveal variation. Insufficient scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding its spatial distribution and associated causes. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing the contextual factors that help explain the geographic unevenness of the nonstandard workforce across U.S. metropolitan areas from 1997 to 2017. We find evidence that the urban context matters, but unevenly across arrangements and time. Three out of four of the nonstandard arrangements studied are more prevalent in metropolitan areas, while on-call workers are typically rural. Independent contractors are more concentrated in cities with higher fissuring, contrary to temporary and contracted out workers. Higher unemployment rates seem to push workers toward on-call arrangements, and inequality to temporary jobs. While the city effects change substantially over time, individual determinants are consistent.