Abstract
The authors develop a model of cumulative disadvantage relating three axes of disadvantage for hourly workers in the US retail and food service sectors: schedule instability, turnover, and earnings. In this model, exposure to unstable work schedules disrupts workers' family and economic lives, straining the employment relation and increasing the likelihood of turnover, which can then lead to earnings losses. Drawing on new panel data from 1,827 hourly workers in retail and food service collected as part of the Shift Project, the authors demonstrate that exposure to schedule instability is a strong, robust predictor of turnover for workers with relatively unstable schedules (about one-third of the sample). Slightly less than half of this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction and another quarter by work-family conflict. Job turnover is generally associated with earnings losses due to unemployment, but workers leaving jobs with moderately unstable schedules experience earnings growth upon re-employment.
Highlights
Over the past 40 years, low-wage jobs with precarious working conditions characterized by economic vulnerability and by temporal precarity have proliferated
While research has shown that schedule instability affects a number of outcomes that could lead to turnover, such as work–family conflict, financial hardship, and job satisfaction, it is not clear which, if any, of these factors lead to job separations
We argue that schedule instability, turnover, and mobility are related in a cumulative disadvantage process by which exposure to unstable schedules disrupts workers’ family lives, work lives, and financial security, weakening the employment relation and leading to higher rates of job separations
Summary
Over the past 40 years, low-wage jobs with precarious working conditions characterized by economic vulnerability and by temporal precarity have proliferated In sectors such as retail and food service, which employ approximately 17% of American workers We argue that schedule instability, turnover, and mobility are related in a cumulative disadvantage process (see DiPrete and Eirich 2006) by which exposure to unstable schedules disrupts workers’ family lives, work lives, and financial security, weakening the employment relation and leading to higher rates of job separations. We investigate the mobility consequences of turnover for these workers by estimating the effect of turnover on earnings due to lost earnings during joblessness and due to changes to earnings upon re-employment These empirical tests capture an important set of pathways through which initial disadvantage in work scheduling can accumulate through its persistent, negative downstream consequences
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