Informal Work and Occupational Structure Blurring

• In Event: Precarious Work and Workers

Abstract

How does the growth of informal work reshape the organization of labor markets and social hierarchies? Drawing on Hughes’s distinction between the functional and moral aspects of occupational differentiation, this article examines how workers in different occupations take up informal work alongside their primary jobs—and what these patterns imply for how clearly occupations remain separated and ranked in practice, both hierarchically and horizontally. I combine six waves of the Survey of Informal Work Participation (2015–2020) with occupational data from the American Community Survey and O*NET to map how 79 occupations engage with 14 types of informal work. I distinguish between two levels of involvement: incidence (whether an occupation participates in a given gig) and intensity (how much time workers devote to it). Incidence is broadly distributed across occupations, suggesting relatively wide access to entry. By contrast, intensity reveals persistent differentiation: ongoing engagement aligns with both status hierarchies and functional boundaries. Using dyadic additive–multiplicative effects models, I show that the clarity of occupational distinctions varies systematically by position in the hierarchy. Status differentiation becomes sharper toward the top but comparatively flattened near the bottom, while functional differentiation follows a curvilinear pattern—most blurred among middle-status occupations and clearer at both ends. Rather than flattening occupational differences, these patterns suggest that informal work can reproduce stratification through new pathways. The analysis contributes to theories of intragenerational mobility by treating the clarity of occupational distinctions as a structural feature, distinct from individual job changes.

Author

• Elle Zhilan Fang, University of Wisconsin-Madison