Precarious Jobs, Precarious Lives? A Cohort Analysis of Trends in Hourly Employment

Research on flexible work organization shows how contract, contingent, and other forms of nonstandard employment in the U.S. labor market are often associated with economic insecurity. This article investigates change over time in the extent and nature of hourly employment, a standard form of work that has been overshadowed in the recent literature despite its association with precarity and other negative worker outcomes. Drawing on cohort methods, we find that stability over time in the aggregate rate of hourly employment masks an upward trend among younger generations. Gen X’ers and Millennials experience higher rates of hourly employment in their late 20s and early 30s than Baby Boomers at the same stage of the life cycle, despite higher rates of college completion. This matters for understanding economic attainment, family formation, and well-being across the life course. As educational attainment has increased in the United States, the pathway from a college degree to the type of stability offered by salaried (nonhourly) employment has become less direct. We theorize that experiences of economic insecurity may be informed by changes in the ability of a college degree to deliver the stability of salaried employment relations.