When working within the same employment spell, female workers, particularly those of color and those working in low-wage service and care jobs, earn significantly less when facing greater volatility than their male counterparts or those working in non-service, non-care occupations.
Research in the past two decades provides ample evidence that the low economic well-being workers encounter and the racial differences associated with that are mostly attributable to occupation segregation, educational attainment, and other individual characteristics. Although these characteristics are pivotal, this research appears to miss an important facet of the labor market story. Recent research on work schedules points to the racial and ethnic inequities in work scheduling before the pandemic. Workers of color and less educated workers were more likely to lose a job during the pandemic. In-job work scheduling changes and month-to-month job-to-job or episodic employment may entail frequent work hours volatility, which can affect workers’ economic well-being, especially that of hourly workers and less advantaged workers.
Despite some progress, racial earning disparities persist in the United States. Research on labor market experience does not explain the link between the volatility low-wage workers encounter and their earnings and it leaves open numerous pressing questions, such as what, if anything, can be done to reduce racial and ethnic differences in economic well-being. Racial differences in earnings could be a product of labor market experience (within and between jobs) that various groups of workers encounter, apart from other characteristics, such as occupational segregation, education factors, and total hours. However, researchers have not conducted longitudinal research to quantify this relationship (if there is any) and to unpack how the association varies by workers’ race and ethnicity.
The present study uses nationally representative, longitudinally linked data to follow a group of hourly workers over four months to assess whether hours volatility links to workers’ subsequent earnings. It further examines whether the earning effects of hours volatility vary by occupations, gender, and race/ethnicity. In addition, we contribute to ongoing research by disentangling within-job hours volatility from between-job hours variability and by determining how each affects workers’ earnings. The findings will complement the growing evidence with regard to gender- and race-based workplace discrimination and have implications for policy development that would stabilize work hours and improve worker economic security.
We find that after adjusting for workers’ characteristics, there is still a significant relationship between month-to-month hours volatility and workers’ earnings. Higher hours volatility, defined as the top tercile of the volatility-index distribution, is linked with lower income earned subsequently. Further analyses reveal that the earnings consequences of volatility vary significantly by occupations. Specifically, even with steady employment, workers in sales, care, or service jobs earn substantially less than their counterparts working in non-service/non-care occupations when experiencing greater volatility. There appears to be gender and racial disparity in earnings according to the measures of experienced volatility. In general, women workers of color have a larger earnings penalty when facing greater volatility even after controlling for average hours worked.
