Over the past ten years, fast food workers have been at the center of powerful social movements like the Fight for $15 and a Union, on the frontlines of essential work during the pandemic, and on the roller coaster of tight labor markets and looming recession. Through it all, fast food workers have contended with working conditions that are often difficult and at times dangerous. We draw on novel survey data to describe these challenges for fast food workers in California’s largest city and to provide new evidence on the role that labor standards can play in raising the floor on job quality in this vital sector.
First, fast food jobs in LA are marked by insufficient and volatile hours.
Most workers are not getting the full‑time hours that a “living wage” assumes. Only about one in three usually works 40 or more hours per week, and one third are involuntarily part‑time, working fewer than 35 hours while wanting more hours at their main job. On top of that, hours swing widely from week to week: the typical worker reports a 13‑hour gap between their busiest and slowest weeks, over a third of their maximum weekly hours. This combination of insufficient hours and large fluctuations in hours fuels income volatility and financial strain. Most workers struggle to cover basic expenses in a typical month (78%) and many doubt they could come up with $400 in an emergency (35%).
Second, schedule instability is widespread and deeply constrains workers’ lives.
Fast food workers in LA County routinely face short notice and last‑minute changes. The majority work variable, rotating, or non‑standard shifts, nearly half have recently worked “clopening” shifts, and most have experienced last‑minute changes to the timing or length of at least one shift (70%). the majority (59%) receive less than two weeks’ notice of their schedules, and a substantial share (40%) are scheduled for on‑call shifts that may or may not materialize. Workers also report having very limited input as to when they work and describe needing to keep their schedules open and available for work. These conditions generate high levels of work–family conflict, make it difficult to arrange stable childcare or schooling, and contribute to financial and emotional stress. Prior Shift Project research links precisely these kinds of unstable schedules to worse sleep, higher psychological distress, and negative impacts on children’s well‑being.
Third, policy protections matter, and fast food workers are being left out.
Our comparison of fast food and retail workers in Los Angeles County shows that fast food workers face more severe underscheduling and schedule instability than retail workers along most dimensions. Crucially, retail workers in the city of Los Angeles have begun to benefit from the Retail Fair Workweek Ordinance (FWWO), while fast food workers remain uncovered. Using a difference‑in‑differences approach, we find that the FWWO substantially improved schedule quality for covered retail workers, reducing short notice, canceled shifts, on‑call work, clopenings, and overall schedule instability. Similar improvements did not occur for retail workers elsewhere in California during this time, strongly suggesting that the ordinance itself is driving these gains.
Taken together, these findings provide new evidence for policymaking in the city of Los Angeles as it considers expansion of the FWWO to the fast food sector. Fast food workers clearly want more hours and more predictable schedules, and they are currently exposed to intense schedule precarity that undermines their economic security and family life. At the same time, evidence from retail workers in Los Angeles demonstrates that Fair Workweek regulations in Los Angeles can meaningfully improve schedule stability and reduce exposure to the just-in-time scheduling practices that are so prevalent in the fast food industry.
Extending Fair Workweek protections—which already have proven results in Los Angeles—to fast food workers could then help remedy a near‑universal problem in this sector. Doing so would not solve every challenge facing fast food workers, but it could directly address one of the most destabilizing features of these jobs and could in turn yield significant benefits for workers’ financial security, health, and family well‑being.
Suggested Citation
Bruey, Kevin, Alessandra Soto, Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett. 2026. “Unpredictable and Unstable: Fast Food Jobs in Los Angeles.” Shift Project research brief.
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