The American labor market is increasingly unequal, with ever greater returns at the top of the market and growing insecurity for workers at the bottom. Much has been written about the economic face of rising precarity for low-wage workers, but this transformation has also involved a shift in the temporal dimension of work.

This research brief is part of a series designed to advance our understanding of working conditions in the service sector–in particular, schedule instability and unpredictability–in cities and states across the country.