EPI BRIEFING PAPER ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE • APRIL 9, 2015 • BRIEFING PAPER #394 IRREGULAR WORK SCHEDULING AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Executive Summary Irregular scheduling he labor market continues to recover, but a About 10 percent of the workforce is assigned to stubbornly high rate of underemployment per- irregular and on-call work shift times and this figure 1 sists as more than five million Americans are is likely low. Add to this the roughly 7 percent of T the employed who work split or rotating shifts and working part-time for economic reasons (U.S. BLS 2015a; 2015b). Not only are many of this type of under- there are about 17 percent of the workforce with employed worker, by definition, scheduled for fewer unstable work shift schedules. hours, days, or weeks than they prefer to be working, the Six percent of hourly workers, 8 percent of salaried daily timing of their work schedules can often be irregu- workers, and 30 percent of those paid on some other lar or unpredictable. This both constrains consumer basis work irregular or on-call shifts. Adding in split spending and complicates the daily work lives of such or rotating shifts, the shares working unstable work workers, particularly those navigating through nonwork schedules are 16 percent (hourly), 12 percent responsibilities such as caregiving. This variability of (salaried) and 36 percent (other). work hours contributes to income instability and thus, By income level, the lowest income workers face the adversely affects not only household consumption but most irregular work schedules. general macroeconomic performance. Workers paid under $22,500 per year are more likely The plight of employees with unstable work schedules to work on irregular schedules than workers in the is demonstrated here with new findings, using General income bracket above that (workers in the latter Social Survey (GSS) data. These findings (as well as key bracket who are salaried would be just above the findings from other research) are highlighted below. current salary minimum threshold for assured FLSA overtime coverage). ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE • 1333 H STREET, NW • SUITE 300, EAST TOWER • WASHINGTON, DC 20005 • 202.775.8810 • WWW.EPI.ORG Irregular shift work is associated with working longer rience greater work-family conflict, and sometimes expe- weekly hours. rience greater work stress. By occupation type, about 15 percent of sales and Less than 11 percent of workers on “regular” work related occupations have irregular or on-call sched- schedules report “often” experiencing work-family ules. conflict in contrast with as many as 26 percent of By industry, irregular scheduling is most prevalent irregular/on-call shift employees, and 19 percent of in agriculture, personal services, business/repair ser- rotating/split shift workers. Similar differences vices, entertainment/recreation, finance/insurance/ appear for reporting that they “never” experience real estate, retail trade, and transportation communi- work-family interference. cations. Overtime work that is required by the employer Estimates of the proportion of the workforce with increases the likelihood of having an irregular sched- “variable hours,” in terms of not being able to specify ule and particularly of working on rotating/split a “usual” workweek (according to Current Popula- shifts. tion Survey, not GSS data), are remarkably consis- Overtime work that is mandatory is greatest among tent—almost 10 percent of workers overall. Being those who earn at least $22,500 but below $40,000 part-time more than doubled the likelihood of hav- per year; who work longer weekly hours; who work ing hours that vary weekly. The share with variable inflexible daily schedules (they can’t take time off workweeks also is higher in certain occupations and or change their starting and ending times); or who industries, such as sales, and lower in others, such as report that there are often too few workers on staff to professional, managerial, and administrative support. get all the work done. Also, the prevalence is reduced for union members, married workers, government employees, whites, Determinants of work-family conflict men, and workers with a higher level of education. and stress Nearly half of workers (45 percent) surveyed by the Work-family conflict is worsened not only by longer International Social Survey Program said that their weekly hours of work, but also by having irregular “employer decides” their work schedule. Only 15 shift work. percent perceived that they were “free to decide” The association between work-family conflict and their work schedule. The remaining 40 percent felt irregular shift work is particularly strong for salaried they could “decide within limits.” This conforms to workers, even when controlling for their relatively another study of “early career” workers; just under longer work hours. half of hourly early career workers surveyed in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth said they have Working on rotating shift times exacerbates work- their daily start and end times of work decided family conflict, although slightly less than does work- entirely by their employer, without their input. ing irregular/on-call shifts and split-shift arrange- ments. Irregular scheduling and outcomes Irregular/on-call work is moderately associated with Employees who work irregular shift times, in contrast higher work stress, but rotating and split-shift times with those with more standard, regular shift times, expe- are not. EPI BRIEFING PAPER #394 | APRIL 9, 2015 PAGE 2 Hourly workers experience greater work stress if many—has been implemented in the state of Ver- working on irregular shift times and more so than mont and in San Francisco and Berkeley, California. salaried workers. These measures provide employees with caregiving Mandatory overtime work contributes to both work- responsibilities a right to request flexible work sched- family conflict and work stress. ules or part-time work. Being underemployed does not significantly reduce Adopting recommendations from the Retail Workers work-family conflict, but part-time workers who pre- Bill of Rights, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors fer that part-time status experience less work-family has enacted new protections for hourly workers in conflict. retail chain stores, to require employers to provide more advance notice in setting and changing work On the other hand, being overemployed somewhat schedules to make them more predictable. The pro- exacerbates work-family conflict, no matter what is tections include providing priority access to extra the level of weekly hours. Because about one in six hours of work—if and when available—to those workers indicate that they are “overemployed” (will- employees who explicitly request such hours, which ing to reduce work time by one day per week and could be a model way to help alleviate the chronic receive 20 percent less pay), better matching of work underemployment in the U.S. labor market. hours with hours preferences would, on balance, likely reduce the extent and incidence of work-family San Francisco requires paying workers who have not conflict. received sufficient advance notice of last-minute schedule changes for a portion of their hours lost, for With work hours controlled for, having a greater “on-call” hours, for being scheduled on split shifts, ability to set one’s work schedule (start and end times and for instances in which they are sent home before and take time off from work) is significantly associ- completing their assigned shifts. ated with reduced work-family conflict. Some employers have adopted various voluntary Public policy measures arrangements that might constitute model practices or minimum standards, including some large compa- The documented associations with work-family conflict nies in the highly competitive retail sector. and work stress not only reinforce the existing “business case” for limiting work hours fluctuation at the behest of The experiences in cities could inform elements of employers only, but also underscore the need to adopt reforms of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) at preventative public policy measures, such as recent the national level, such as the proposed The Sched- reforms taking place in states and municipalities across ules that Work Act (H.R. 5159). the United States. Specifically, community action groups and labor unions that have witnessed the deleterious Introduction effects of irregular work schedules on people and their As the U.S. labor market gradually climbs out of the deep families have spearheaded efforts to propose and adopt crater left by the Great Recession, one encouraging out- legislation at local and federal levels. come has been the increased public attention to the stub- bornly high rate of underemployment, such as working A legally protected “right to request” changes in part-time hours due to either shortened workweeks or work hours, schedules, or location, with protection unavailability of suitable full-time employment, and the from retaliation—modeled on the laws in the U.K., daily work-life challenges faced by such underemployed Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Ger- EPI BRIEFING PAPER #394 | APRIL 9, 2015 PAGE 3 workers. In policy discussions, however, the problems of omy depends, and directly affects workers’ daily lives, by unstable or irregular (and often insufficient) work hours complicating the navigation of nonwork responsibilities remain a layer beneath the more surface tragedy of per- such as parenting, other forms of caregiving, and school- sistent and long-term unemployment. The number of ing.6 At the same time, however, there is a significant workers in the U.S. working “part-time due to economic segment of the workforce that may have the number of reasons” had diminished to about 6.9 million workers hours they prefer but the timing of their work sched- as of November 2014, down from a peak of over 9 ules—including through irregular shifts, unwelcome million following the recession (U.S. BLS 2015a).2 But overtime work, and lack of schedule control—makes it remains much greater than the 4 million in 2006, daily work-life navigation difficult.