The Effects of Service-Industry Work Schedule Unpredictability on Families

• In Event: Parental Work Schedules and the Well-Being of Children and Families

Abstract

The context of work in the United States has changed dramatically in the last half century. Since the 1970s, earnings volatility has increased across socio-economic levels, with volatility most pronounced among low-income people (Dynan et al., 2012; Gottschalk & Moffitt, 2009; Morduch & Schneider, 2017). Pressures of globalization and trade, as well as automation, led to the destruction of jobs in many industries, particularly those such as manufacturing that were a path to stability for less-educated workers. In their place has come service work, which is characterized by both lower wages and more unstable employment and hours (Autor et al., 2013)

The nature of service work has also changed in ways that increase uncertainty, with important potential consequences for both families and children. While service employment has long been less stable than manufacturing employment, today’s service workers face additional forms of uncertainty even while stably employed. Managerial innovations have changed the day-to-day operations of retail and food service establishments such that service workers experience great daily uncertainty in both pay and hours. That type of schedule unpredictability is common among low-wage working parents (Lambert et al., 2014; Schneider & Harknett, 2019; Ananat and Gassman-Pines, under review).

In many countries, such unpredictable employer behavior is disallowed by labor law, but in much of the United States labor policy allows it. We seek to understand the implications of this laissez-faire policy regime with the first large-scale, over-time data on such workers and their families, collected using a unique sample recruitment strategy, venue-time sampling, and an innovative survey data collection protocol, daily surveys using SMS text messages.

Method. Individuals were eligible for this study if they worked in an hourly position in the large U.S. city in which the study took place and had a child between ages 2 and 7. Recruitment occurred in later summer and early fall of 2019. We used a venue-based sampling approach to recruit workers, using a complete list of retail, food service, and hospitality businesses in the city. We recruited 1196 workers.

At the beginning of the study, respondents were asked about their demographics, health and well-being, work history, each job’s hourly wage and whether it is tipped, and reports on children. Then, every day for 30 consecutive days, respondents reported on that day’s work, personal well-being, and family experiences via SMS text message. The daily survey gathers information about work hours, unanticipated work hours or schedule changes, and worker and family well-being each day. To evaluate effects of unanticipated schedule changes on worker and family well-being, we will estimate:

Y_it=β_0+β_1*〖ScheduleChange〗_i+ψ_i+τ_t+ϵ

for person i on day t, with ψ represents a vector of person-level controls and fixed effects, and τ is an indicator for day of the week. Preliminary results show that schedule disruptions are common and harmful to parent mental health. Additional analyses will examine child mental health and subgroup effects, including heterogeneity of the effects of schedule changes by worker characteristics, such as gender, race and ethnicity, education, and family structure.

Authors

• Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Barnard College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anna Gassman-Pines, Duke Univeristy
  Presenting Author

• John Fitz-Henley, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author