Determinants of weekly work schedules

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the determinants of nonstandard weekly work schedules of U.S. workers. Recent empirical evidence, as well as writings of influential economists, suggest that growth in nonstandard patterns of work (otherwise known as contingent, peripheral, flexible, or just-in-time workweek) far outstrips that of the conventional 40-hour 5-day workweek. This study, therefore, is concerned with investigating these recent trends.

A labor market model patterned after those of Finegan and Kniesner was used to analyze data for the basic hours model, whereas the probit model was used in the analysis of three nonstandard work schedules: part—time, moonlighting, and home-based hours of work.

The data was taken from the May 1985 Current Population Survey (CPS) of the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPS provided information on a wide variety of personal, productivity, and labor market characteristic variables which are believed to be related to labor market behavior and included information concerning part—time, moonlighting, home—based, over—time, temporary and premium pay work schedules.

The more important findings of the study point to the following conclusions: (1) Women, blacks, younger and older workers, as well as poorly educated persons, are more likely to be part-timers than are other members of the U.S. workforce. (2) Whites with good education are more likely to hold more than one job than nonwhites or whites with little education. Also, better educated older workers and whites whose jobs are in the financial records processing, child care, business, and repair services are more likely to be home-based workers than other members of the working population. (3) It was found that in general children do not detract from workweek preferences of families contrary to intuition. If anything, it is only the presence of a new baby which has a detrimental impact on hours or work. (4) Also, contrary to received doctrine, U.S. men and women do not require drastically different incentives with regard to hours of work they are willing to supply. This finding is supported by Nakamura and Nakamura using both U.S. and Canadian data.