Woods Tyler, Nguyen Dylan, Schneider Daniel, Harknett Kristen
Harvard Kennedy School, USA.
University of California, San Francisco, USA.
Res Soc Stratif Mobil. 2024 Aug;92:100962. doi: 10.1016/j.rssm.2024.100962.
Since the mid-1970s, there has been a sharp rise in the prevalence of "bad jobs" in the U.S. labor market, characterized by stagnant wages, unstable work schedules, and limited fringe benefits. Scholarly, policy, and public debate persists, however, about whether these jobs can serve as steppingstones to intra-generational job quality mobility or are instead "poverty traps." While scholarship increasingly recognizes the multi-dimensional nature of job quality, prior research on intra-generational job mobility overwhelmingly estimates only wage mobility and generally focuses on estimating the degree of mobility, to the exclusion of the contexts and mechanisms that foster such mobility. We draw on new panel data collected from 8600 hourly service sector workers between 2017 and 2022 to estimate short-run mobility into good jobs, defined as paying at least $15/hour, having a stable work schedule, and offering paid sick leave, employer-sponsored health insurance, and retirement benefits. Overall, we find that mobility into such "good jobs" is low. However, we show that the rate of transition into "good jobs" is strongly conditioned by local labor market conditions: during the "Great Resignation" and in low state-month unemployment periods, nearly twice the share of workers transitioned to "good jobs" as in less favorable contexts, particularly workers who changed sector as opposed to staying at the same firm or taking new jobs in the service sector. Notably, during periods of labor market tightness, workers who stayed at the same employer had similar rates of mobility into "good jobs" as those who changed employers within the sector.
自20世纪70年代中期以来，美国劳动力市场上“劣质工作”的 prevalence急剧上升，其特点是工资停滞不前、工作时间表不稳定，以及附带福利有限。然而，学术界、政策界和公众对于这些工作是可以成为代内工作质量流动的 steppingstones，还是相反地成为“贫困陷阱”，仍存在争议。虽然学术界越来越认识到工作质量的多维度性质，但先前关于代内工作流动的研究绝大多数只估计工资流动，并且通常专注于估计流动程度，而忽略了促进这种流动的背景和机制。我们利用2017年至2022年间从8600名小时工服务部门工人收集的新面板数据，来估计进入优质工作的短期流动情况，优质工作被定义为每小时至少支付15美元、有稳定的工作时间表，并提供带薪病假、雇主赞助的医疗保险和退休福利。总体而言，我们发现进入此类“优质工作”的流动率很低。然而，我们表明，向“优质工作”的过渡率受到当地劳动力市场状况的强烈制约：在“大辞职”期间和州月失业率较低的时期，过渡到“优质工作”的工人比例几乎是在较不利情况下的两倍，特别是那些更换部门的工人，而不是留在同一家公司或在服务部门获得新工作的工人。值得注意的是，在劳动力市场紧张时期，留在同一雇主处的工人进入“优质工作”的流动率与在该部门内更换雇主的工人相似。
