Work and Occupations

This article addresses measurement challenges that have stymied contemporary research on the working poor. The authors review previously used measurement schemes and discuss conceptual assumptions that underlie each. Using 2013 March Current Population Survey data, the authors estimate national- and race-specific rates of working poverty using more than 125 measures. The authors then evaluate the association between each measure and a latent construct of working poverty using factor analysis and develop a working poverty index derived from these results. Finally, the authors estimate multivariate regression models to identify key social and demographic risk factors for poverty among workers. The authors’ national estimates of working poverty range from 2% to nearly 19% and are highly sensitive to alternative assumptions. The authors’ analyses find that the latent construct is most highly correlated with empirical measures of working poverty that include part-time or part-year employment and that use poverty income thresholds that include both the poor and near poor. Crude rates and conditional risks of poverty among workers vary considerably among racial groups. This article provides a conceptual and empirical baseline for decisions about how best to estimate the magnitude and composition of America's working poor population.

This article looks at early-career jazz musicians working in London. It links sociological literature on precarity and the life course with a more specific focus on the process of establishing a career in music. It shows how participants sought to embrace and sometimes even manufacture greater precarity in their working lives, and how they contextualized it as part of the life course. Their ability to manage precarity in this way, however, was greatly affected by structural factors, specifically socioeconomic background. Particular elements that are especially pronounced in creative work, such as the prominence of project-based employment and the importance of passion for the job, are important factors leading to the management and indefinite extension of these transitional periods.

Policies to render employment and family more compatible have been adopted in many postindustrial countries. But the organizational contexts that facilitate or hinder employees' policy usage have been underexamined. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the organizational conditions associated with greater use of parental leave policy in the workplace. The authors draw on organizational data from contemporary Japan, a setting that epitomizes norms of the ideal worker and intensive parenting that are increasingly highlighted in studies of work–family conflict in the United States. Analyzing panel data on more than 500 large Japanese companies from 2001 to 2009, the authors find greater utilization of parental leave policies in firms that have a higher representation of women in managerial positions and that include human resource executives on the corporate board. Usage does not increase, however, in firms that offer parental leave that is longer than legally mandated. These results highlight the importance of key features of the organizational context in enhancing employees' use of parental leave policy.

Mobilizing Against Inequality: Unions, Immigrant Workers, and the Crisis of Capitalism is an edited volume that provides case studies of unions organizing immigrant workers in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The book, edited by Lee H. Adler, Maite Tapia, and Lowell Turner, contains details of cases where unions have allied with community organizations and other social movement partners to expand union access or political rights to immigrant workers. The authors draw lessons from the best case scenarios. This book also serves as an example of the kind of work labor studies scholars and institutes are pursuing.

Thiede, B. T., Lichter, D. T., & Sanders, S. R. (2015). America’s working poor: Conceptualization, measurement, and new estimates. Work and Occupations, 42(3), 267–312. doi:10.1177/0730888415573635

In the above article in Work and Occupations, the data in one sentence on pp. 298–299 has been corrected. The original sentence appeared as follows:

Using these two preferred measures—based on well-justified conceptual and empirical criteria—we estimate that between approximately 637,000 and 796,000 working family heads were poor in 2012, and between 2.0 and 2.4 million persons lived in poor families with a working head.²³

The revised sentence now appears in the article as follows:

Using these two preferred measures—based on well-justified conceptual and empirical criteria—we estimate that between approximately 6.4 and 8.0 million working family heads were poor in 2012, and between 20 and 24 million persons lived in poor families with a working head.²³