Service sector jobs in the United States are characterized by low pay, few fringe benefits, and limited employee control over scheduled workdays and times. Many service sector employers across the country rely on just-in-time and on-call scheduling practices designed to minimize labor costs by closely aligning staffing with consumer demand. These practices can introduce significant instability into the lives of workers and their families.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought public awareness to the vital role that front-line service sector workers play in our economy and daily lives. These workers did the essential and in-person work of staffing grocery stores and pharmacies, keeping restaurants and retail running, and delivering supplies while millions of other Americans sheltered in place and worked from home. The service sector makes up a large sector of the U.S. labor force, accounting for over 23 million jobs. Despite their importance during the pandemic, jobs in this sector are profoundly precarious, undermining both the economic security and the health and wellbeing of workers...
Using the most recent shift data, this brief explores how vaccination among service sector workers has changed since the Spring. Vaccination rates have increased to 68% as of Nov 2021. These rates were even higher for employees that were incentivized to get vaccinated by their employer. However, the survey data show that hesitancy and resistance emerge now as the primary barriers to vaccination among the unvaccinated.
For many young workers, the service sector is the site where they begin their careers. The service sector comprises 17 percent of jobs in the U.S. economy, and 35 percent of the jobs occupied by those under the age of 25 (BLS, 2018). Young workers in the service sector typically receive low wages and few fringe benefits, and also contend with erratic work schedules, with hours and shifts that change day to day and week to week with little advance notice. These workers rarely have much input into the timing and amount of their scheduled work hours. These conditions may...
As eligibility for the Covid-19 vaccine expands to all Americans and the country moves towards a full re-opening, durably returning to normal life depends on vaccine uptake. The U.S. developed and produced vaccines at record speed and, initially, the rate of daily administered doses rose sharply from January to April 2021. Since May 2021, however, the pace of rollout has declined and many remain unvaccinated.
Each year, millions of U.S. workers experience the need for time away from work after welcoming a new child to the family or because of a health or a caregiving need. However, the U.S. is one of the few industrialized countries that does not offer comprehensive paid leave with job protection to workers. While some benefit from paid family and medical leave offered by a handful of states, the large majority of American workers have no such protections. Voluntary employer leave policies overwhelmingly benefit white-collar, salaried workers, leaving most low-wage workers unpaid and unprotected in the event they need time...
On July 1, 2017, Seattle implemented one of the nation’s first laws mandating schedule predictability for a subset of workers. The Secure Scheduling Ordinance (SSO) covers hourly workers at retail and food service establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide and at full-service restaurants with at least 500 employees and at least 40 locations worldwide.
The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a bright light on the difficult working conditions faced by many workers in the service sector. Workers in retail, food service, delivery and fulfillment positions are now lauded as “essential” and front-line heroes, yet, even in the midst of this praise, and in the midst of a pandemic, these same workers often lack the basic ability to take a paid sick day.
This interactive visualization shows changes in the adoption of personal protection equipment across different employers during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 has made service sector jobs much more dangerous. But, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released guidelines to prevent infections in the workplace, employers were largely left to adopt measures at their own discretion. Scattered reports suggested that these efforts often fell short, especially early in the pandemic and that substantial variation in the adoption of safety practices persisted across states and firms.
