Job Insecurity in the American Employment Structure

• In Event: 452 - Regular Session. Job Quality, Insecurity, and Well-Being

Abstract

Work in America is increasingly polarized and precarious. Prior studies are divided over whether the degradation in wages and security affects the same jobs or different jobs, however. We use the Current Population Survey to develop the first index of job insecurity that provides a consistent measure of job-level precarity from the 1980s to the 2000s. We then analyze how employment growth was distributed across job insecurity overall and separately for gender and race-ethnic groups. Our preliminary analyses suggest that jobs increasing grow in a polarized pattern across levels of job insecurity, just as they have across the distribution of job wages. We find very different patterns of employment growth across levels of insecurity by gender and race, however, indicating that labor market position significantly shapes exposure to insecurity. We close by raising questions for continued research on job-level insecurity, especially about the degree to which employment growth across levels of wages and insecurity co-vary or diverge.

Authors

• Rachel E. Dwyer, The Ohio State University

• Erik Olin Wright, University of Wisconsin