Abstract
Data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking indicate that, over the course of a month, more than one-quarter of adults engage in some informal work outside of a main job. Of these, about two-thirds say that they do informal work to earn money and about one-third say that informal work is an important source of household income. Informal work plays a particularly important role in the household finances of minorities, the less educated, those experiencing financial hardship, those who work part time involuntarily, independent contractors, and the unemployed. Aggregate earnings from informal work are modest but help many households to make ends meet. Informal work cannot compensate, however, for the lack of benefits typical of part-time and contractor work.
- © 2019 Russell Sage Foundation. Abraham, Katharine G., and Susan N. Houseman. 2019. “Making Ends Meet: The Role of Informal Work in Supplementing Americans’ Income.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5(5): 110–31. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.5.06. We are grateful to Lillian Vesic-Petrovic for excellent research assistance and to Erica Groshen, Harry Holzer, two anonymous referees, and participants in the conference on Improving Employment and Earnings in Twenty-First Century Labor Markets for valuable suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. Direct correspondence to: Katharine G. Abraham at kabraham{at}umd.edu, 1218 Lefrak Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; and Susan N. Houseman at houseman{at}upjohn.org, 300 S Westnedge Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49007.
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