This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Workers who juggle volatile work hours that change from week to week may experience adverse health effects that affect their ability to work, although the limitations vary by gender, say researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who conducted a recent study. Men who experienced greater fluctuations in their work hours were more likely to report worsening health and remain in their jobs, while women tended to reduce their hours, suspend work or leave their jobs entirely for health-related reasons, according to the study's authors, doctoral student Sinyee Qianyi Lu and sociology professor Tim Liao.
The researchers examined data on more than 61,000 U.S. workers ages 18–64 who participated in the Current Population Survey, a monthly household survey administered jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Participants' self-rated health status and month-to-month work hours were tracked across a 16-month period to study interactions between the two. Published in the journal SSM – Population Health, the findings add to a growing body of research examining the health consequences of unstable work time and schedules, including substantial fluctuations in weekly work hours. By including data on workers who decreased their work hours, interrupted or terminated employment due to health strains—a group that prior studies often excluded—the current study lends greater clarity to our understanding of the health effects associated with precarious employment and men's and women's differing responses to adverse working conditions, the researchers said.
"Job quality matters and involves not only pay, benefits or total hours, but also work schedule stability and resulting health outcomes—an area that has been underexplored in much of the prior research," said Lu, who studies occupational inequality, nonstandard scheduling and the rise of remote/hybrid work. "By treating health-related work limitation as an outcome rather than sample attrition, our analysis followed these individuals even when their deteriorating health caused them to reduce or exit paid employment. "Making health-driven employment changes observable matters because these individuals shape who remains in the employed population and what health effects are detectable.
Expanding the sample beyond the continuously employed 'survivors' brings into focus the broader population that is also at risk." The researchers obtained data from the Current Population Survey basic monthly files and the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplements from the University of Minnesota's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. By linking individuals' data at specific time points across these two data sets, the researchers were able to track participants' work hours and health changes across two consecutive calendar years. The project encompassed two four-month observation periods two years apart, separated by an eight-month unobserved interval.
Spanning the periods 2016–2018 and 2020–2024, the overall sample encompassed the prepandemic, midpandemic and postpandemic years. In the baseline model, there were 55,062 continuously employed individuals, and the expanded model reintroduced 6,069 additional people who reported health-related work limitations during the second year they were studied for the current project. Those in the latter group reported working part time for health reasons, being absent from work because of illness or medical problems, or having left the workforce entirely due to illness or disability, Lu said.
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