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Though the growth of the gig economy has coincided with increased economic precarity in the new economy, we know less about the extent to which gig work (compared with other self-employment arrangements and non-gig work) may fuel economic insecurity among American households. We fill this gap in the literature by drawing on a sample of 4,756 workers from a unique national survey capturing economic hardships among non-standard workers like app- and platform-based gig and other self-employed workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from generalized boosted regression modeling, utilizing machine learning to account for potential endogeneity, demonstrated that gig workers experienced significantly greater economic hardship than non-gig and other self-employed workers during the pandemic. For example, gig workers were more likely to experience food insecurity, miss bill payments, and suffer income loss compared with non-gig and other self-employed workers during the pandemic. While household liquid assets endowment prior to the pandemic reduced the effect of gig work on experiencing economic hardships, having dependent children in the household increased this effect. Thus, contrary to democratizing entrepreneurship opportunities, these findings suggest that the expansion of the gig economy may exacerbate labor market inequality, where wealth-endowed families are protected against adverse economic consequences of the gig economy. We discuss the implications of these findings for inequality-reducing labor market policies, including policies that account for the interconnectedness of family and the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Precarious Employment (PE) is characterized by job, income, and benefit insecurities. Studies surrounding PE and well-being have been predominantly quantitative, leaving a gap in rich descriptions of employment experiences. We recruited a sample of 40 adults aged 25-55 who were involved in PE during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic or lost employment due to the pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were administered. Employment and income insecurities were common and had negative impacts on the well-being of participants and their families. Uncertainty about future employment prospects and job and income loss resulted in chronic distress. Other insecurities—access to benefits, violation of worker rights, worker safety—was also reported as impacting well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened insecurities, hardships, and distress among workers with PE conditions. Given the myriad insecurities experienced by those engaged in PE, the focus of precarious work research should also include working conditions, violation of worker rights, and managerial domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Like many other countries, Australian government policy focuses on extending working life as a response to concern about the cost of an ageing population. In this article, we focus on older aged care workers and highlight how poor employment conditions hinder their capacity to work in later life. Many of these workers are at risk of time and income poverty, since they are on low wage, part-time, low-hour contracts and need to pick up extra shifts to earn a living wage. The interactions between time poverty and income poverty have been developed within a body of literature that analyses the quantities of time individuals and households allocate to paid employment, household, family and caring responsibilities, sleep and self-care. Burchardt's notion of 'time and income capability' brings insights from this corpus into dialogue with the capabilities approach, a political philosophy that equates wellbeing with the breadth of realistic opportunities for people to do things that they have reason to value. This study uses Burchardt's construct to analyse qualitative data from interviews with 20 older personal care workers. While all the workers we spoke with engaged in self-sustaining practices, there were varying levels of opportunity to pursue them. Workers with less time and income capability found it more difficult to sustain themselves and their households. Some employer practices diminished workers' time and income capability: unrealistic workloads necessitating unpaid hours; providing little opportunity for input into rostering; and late-notice roster changes. When time and income capability was too low, workers' informal care duties, social connections and health were compromised. In the Australian aged care sector, several changes can enable longer working lives: sufficient paid hours to perform the role, wage loading for hours in addition to those contracted, written notice for roster changes, and increased wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

There has been a rising trend of labor migration globally. Given their alien status within the legal framework of the host countries, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) are especially vulnerable to poor employment conditions that may affect their health status, yet there is still a lack of quantitative evidence in this population hitherto. Using randomly sampled data from a cross-sectional survey of 2,017 live-in female MDWs in Hong Kong, a setting with a high concentration of MDWs, this study examined the association of employment conditions with physical and mental health among the MDWs. We observed poorer physical and mental health status among the MDWs when compared with the general population in Hong Kong. Our findings suggest that employment conditions, including household size, working on the rest day, and housing type, and age were associated with physical health, while employment conditions, including not ever receiving wages on time, frequency of financial remittances, paying the employment agency, having a private room, fulfillment of work-related needs, physical abuse, and discrimination, and sociodemographic characteristics, including age and duration of migration, were associated with mental health. Social support in general did not confound these associations, but religious activities and daily contact with friends were also associated with mental health. Our findings have important implications in designing interventions and policies to improve the physical and mental well-being of this vulnerable migrant population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Informal employment is an employment condition in which workers are not protected by labor regulations. It has been associated with poor health status in middle- and low-income countries, but it is still a neglected issue in high-income countries. Our aim was to estimate the association between health status and employment profiles in Spain, attending to the role of workplace risk factors. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 8,060 workers from the Seventh Spanish Working Conditions Survey (2011). We defined 4 employment profiles and estimated the associations between them and poor self-perceived health using Poisson regression models. All analyses were stratified by sex. The prevalence of the informal profile was 4% for women and 1.5% for men. Differences in self-perceived health status among employment profiles were negligible. Only women engaged in informal employment had poorer self-perceived health than those in the reference profile. This difference disappeared after adjusting models for psychosocial risk factors. In conclusion, we did not find differences in self-perceived health status between employment profiles, except for women in informal employment. Efforts should be made to improve the psychosocial risk factors in women in informal employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This article presents an overview of the recent work on precarious employment and employment quality in relation to workers' health and well-being. More specifically, the article mainly reviews the work performed in the E.U. 7th Framework project, SOPHIE. First, we present our overarching conceptual framework. Then, we provide a compiled overview of the evidence on the sociodemographic and European crosscountry distribution of employment quality and employment precariousness. Subsequently, we provide the current evidence regarding the relations with health and broader worker well-being indicators. A final section summarizes current insights on the pathways relating precarious employment and health and wellbeing. The article concludes with a plea for further data collection and research into the longitudinal effects of employment precariousness among emerging groups of workers. Based on the evidence compiled in this article, policymakers should be convinced of the harmful health and well-being effects of employment precariousness and (further) labor market flexibilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This article reports evidence gained by the SOPHIE Project regarding employment and labor market-related policies. In the first step, quality of employment and of precarious and informal employment in Europe were conceptualized and defined. Based on these definitions, we analyzed changes in the prevalence and population distribution of key health-affecting characteristics of employment and work between times of economic prosperity and economic crisis in Europe and investigated their impact on health outcomes. Additionally, we examined the effects of several employment and labor market-related policies on factors affecting health equity, including a specific analysis concerning work-related gender equity policies and case studies in different European countries. Our findings show that there is a need to standardize definitions and indicators of (the quality of) employment conditions and improve information systems. This is challenging given the important differences between and within European countries. In our results, low quality of employment and precarious employment is associated with poor mental health. In order to protect the well-being of workers and reduce work-related health inequalities, policies leading to precarious working and employment conditions need to be suspended. Instead, efforts should be made to improve the security and quality of employment for all workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

In this study, the authors identify and analyze a distinct and understudied source of gender inequality: gender differences in violations of wage-related workplace laws. The authors find that women have significantly higher rates of minimum wage and overtime violations than men and also lose more of their earnings to wage theft than men. In the case of minimum wage violations, the authors also find that nativity and immigration status strongly mediate this gender difference. Multivariate analysis suggests that demand-side characteristics—occupation and measures of nonstandard work and informality—account for more of the gender difference in minimum wage violations than do worker characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

International company restructuring involving knowledge intensive jobs causes increasing concern about the effect on the globalization of high-skilled employees. Drawing on case studies in four Danish-based companies, this article argues that high-skilled employees in lead companies are rarely insulated from international restructuring processes. However, effects on wage and working conditions vary dependent on the motivation for restructuring, and as companies learn to take advantage of pools of skilled employees abroad. Continued international restructuring appear to challenge the insulation of high-skilled workers over time. Further, the article shows that knowledge intensive companies increasingly apply relational global value chain governance with multidirectional consequences for wage and working conditions among the high-skilled employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This article explores the ways in which employers’ organizational networks, as shaped by the emergence of the “contract state” and related changes in the legal environment, affect employment practices. The classic analysis of the ways in which the legal environment benefits elites has successfully been applied to large organizations. Here, from a microsociological perspective, the authors researched how within an ambivalent legal context small and medium size cleaning companies interact with members of their organizational network. Semistructured interviews with cleaning subcontractors illustrate a specific type of standardization process by which the Finance Ministry’s administrative guidelines encourage cleaning companies to ignore workers’ rights and develop illegal employment practices which are then transferred from contracts with state agencies to contracts with private firms purchasing services. The possibility to interpret this process as a form of state power is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

I examine the effect of job insecurity and job degradation on the sense of personal control. Analyses of two waves of panel observations from a national survey of American workers reveal that prolonged job insecurity is associated with reduced personal control—and this effect increases with age. I also examine whether insecurity is associated with deteriorating job quality and whether degradation reduces personal control. Recent insecurity is associated with increased job pressures, while prolonged insecurity is associated with decreased decision-making latitude. I find no evidence, however, that changes in job quality explain the relationship between job insecurity and personal control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This paper analyses the impact of external restructuring along value chains (including outsourcing, relocation and spatial concentration of activities) on work and employment. Drawing on findings of a European research project covering manufacturing and service industries, the paper highlights the dynamics of value chain reorganisation. Regarding employment consequences, it is argued that external restructuring leads to a fragmentation of employment and work as labour processes are stretched over organisational boundaries and workforces are divided by different employment contracts and terms and conditions. Generally, employment and working conditions worsen downstream in the value chain. However, because of increasing competition within value chains and networks, externalisation often no longer cushions the workforce of core firms against pressures and risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Purpose. This study analyzed correlates of workers' perceptions of the extent to which their work environment is healthy and how these perceptions influence job satisfaction, employee commitment, workplace morale, absenteeism, and intent to quit. Design. One-time cross-sectional telephone survey. Setting. Canadian employees in 2000. Subjects. A randomly chosen, nationally representative sample of 2500 employed respondents, using a household sampling frame. The response rate was 39.2%. Self-employed individuals were excluded, leaving a subsample of 2112 respondents. Measures. The dependent variable was the response to the item, "The work environment is healthy" (5-point strongly agree-strongly disagree Likert scale). Independent variables used in bivariate and ordinary least-squares regression analyses included sociodemographic characteristics, employment status, organizational characteristics, and scales that measured job demands, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, communication/social support, employee influence, and, job resources. Perceptions ora healthy work environment were related to job satisfaction, commitment, morale (measured on a 5-point scale), number of self-reported absenteeism days in the past 12 months, and whether or not the respondent had looked for a job with another employer in the past 12 months. Results. The strongest correlate of a healthy work environment was a scale of good communication and social support (beta = .27). The next strongest was a job demands scale (beta = -.15.) Employees in self-rated healthier work environments had significantly (p < 0.01) higher job satisfaction, commitment and morale, and lower absenteeism and intent to quit. Conclusions. The study supports a comprehensive model of workplace health that targets working conditions, work relationships, and workplace organization for health promotion interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...