Toward Work-Family Justice for Precarious Workers: Examining Multidimensional Job Precarity and Work-Family Time Use through Latent Class Analysis

Background and Purpose

The challenge of balancing work and caregiving responsibilities has grown steadily due to increasing precarity in the labor market. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the urgency of addressing work-family balance for working families navigating precarious job conditions and opened a policy window for work-family policy reform in the United States- the only wealthy country without a federally mandated paid leave and patchwork of limited work-family programs. While past research has explored the relationship between precarious jobs and work-family balance, the understanding remains fragmented. This gap arises as studies often focus solely on singular dimensions of precarious jobs, overlooking their multiple dimensions. This study aims to examine the relationship between time-based work-family balance and multidimensional job precarity, which encompasses insecure employment, unpredictable schedules, low income, and lack of social benefits.

Methods

This study utilizes the pooled 2017-18 American Time Use Survey and the Leave and Job Flexibilities Module. I restrict my sample to wage and salary workers with childcare and/or eldercare duties who report one hour of paid work or more on a diary day (N=2,940). I employ Latent Class Analysis BCH 3-step to categorize workers into distinct classes of precarity and examine their variations in time-based work-family balance, including time allocated to work and caregiving, engagement in secondary caregiving during work, and the number of fragmented work and caregiving episodes in a day. The eight variables for precarity class generation measure the four dimensions of precarious work: (1) employment: whether the individual is a part-time or full-time worker; whether the individual is professional/managerial or not, (2) work schedule: whether the individual has flexible work hours; how in advance the individual is notified of work schedule; whether the worker typically works daytime or not, (3) income: weekly earnings of the individual in quantile, (4) benefits: whether the individual has access to paid leave and/or unpaid leave(Kalleberg 2009; 2014).

Results

Preliminary findings identify four subgroups of workers based on their job precarity: Typical Stable Workers(27%), Stable Workers with Limited Flexibility(28.4%), Non-managerial/professional Full-Timers(28.1%), and Flexible Part-Timers(16.5%). Compared to Typical Stable Workers, Non-managerial/Professional Full-Timers spend 25.5 minutes more in paid work and family caregiving (p < 0.05) whereas Flexible Part-timers spend 94.35 minutes less (p < 0.001), indicating differences in work-family burden. Non-managerial/professional Full-Timers show fewer daily work and caregiving episodes (β = -0.97, p < .01), suggesting clearer boundaries between work and caregiving time. Regarding secondary caregiving during work, Non-managerial/professional Full-Timers spend less time in secondary caregiving during paid work (β = -12.44, p < 0.01) than Typical Stable Workers, which indicates less capacity to perform work and care simultaneously. Conversely, Typical Stable Workers may have more capacity to perform work and care simultaneously, but experience divided attention.

Implications

The study highlights the nuanced work-family experiences across worker groups based on their job precarity, emphasizing the variations in different aspects of work-family balance at the federal level. These findings offer implications for diversified targeted policy interventions promoting work-family justice in the era of rising precarity.