Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Income volatility is increasingly recognized as an important component of financial insecurity, with new research demonstrating the pervasive nature of volatility not just on an annual basis but month-to-month and even week-to-week.This paper seeks to enhance our understanding of the connections between income swings and family outcomes for hourly retail workers. These workers are vulnerable to income shocks because they earn low wages, have changing, often unpredictable schedules, and are paid hourly. Many experience severe degrees of income volatility on a week-to-week basis, driven partly by unpredictable and unstable scheduling. We present results from the Shift Project - a new, national survey of 19,000 service sector workers employed by 38 large retail or fast-food employers. The paper shows that income swings are common and sizable among hourly workers, with 40% of workers reporting that their income varies from week-to-week. We also show that unpredictable schedules are a significant driver of income and earnings volatility and that income and earnings volatility is connected to financial insecurity such as material hardship and trouble paying bills.