Abstract
This article explores the implications of nonstandard employment for types of workers and their change over time. Using data from 1995, 2005, and 2017, we trace the evolving forms of nonstandard employment over the last decade and the associated job-quality patterns for workers with different skills, measured by education levels and occupation tasks. We find that nonstandard employment reduces earnings and weekly work schedule but does not affect the likelihood of feeling insecure about job continuity for workers in general. However, a closer examination reveals considerable variation along these three dimensions: highly educated nonstandard workers have lower earnings and fewer working hours than traditional workers over time and nonstandard routine occupation workers tend to feel greater job insecurity. Variations across gender and race-ethnicity are also discussed.
- © 2019 Russell Sage Foundation. Liu, Cathy Yang, and Luísa Nazareno. 2019. “The Changing Quality of Nonstandard Work Arrangements: Does Skill Matter?” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5(4): 104–28. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.4.04. We thank the editors of this volume, the reviewers, and colleagues who participated in the Russell Sage Foundation and W. K. Kellogg Foundation’s conference on Changing Job Quality: Causes, Consequences, and Challenges, June 2018, for their insightful comments and suggestions. We appreciate the financial support from the Kauffman Foundation Future of Work program. Direct correspondence to: Cathy Yang Liu at cyliu{at}gsu.edu, 14 Marietta St. NW #329, Atlanta, GA 30303; and Luísa Nazareno at luisa.nazareno{at}gmail.com, 14 Marietta St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30303.
Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.