Work-hour volatility by the numbers: How do workers fare in the wake of the pandemic? 
Economic lives have become fluid in the United States during recent decades, with individuals and families facing income instability often driven by unstable or insufficient work hours. This volatility threatens the security of low-income workers. The current economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to examine these issues and investigate who is benefiting—and who is not. This brief looks at work-hour volatility over a period of 2016 to 2022 by a variety of factors, including wage level, parental status, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, and age, and demonstrates that greater volatility is marked among low-wage, less-educated, and young workers. While results suggest a possible return to prepandemic conditions, where gaps in volatility among these groups were narrowing, the extent to which these gains will be sustained as economic recovery continues remains to be seen.
Key Findings
- Nationwide, workers with the lowest wages, those with less than a high-school diploma, and younger workers faced substantially greater work-hour volatility between 2016 and 2022, even after adjusting for workers’ various characteristics.
- Black workers and unmarried parents also experienced higher volatility in hours worked.
- From 2021 onward, the wage-, race-, and age-based gaps in volatility all showed signs of improvement, albeit with unmarried parents and less-educated workers still seeing large differences relative to their child-free and highly educated peers.
- The groups with the most volatile hours remain those working fewer hours. Even though workers are regaining hours, the levels of hours worked and the variability of those hours have not fully returned to those of the prepandemic period for less-advantaged workers.