IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/26379.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How do Older Workers use Nontraditional Jobs?

Author

Listed:
  • Alicia H. Munnell
  • Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher
  • Abigail N. Walters

Abstract

Working consistently through one’s fifties and early sixties is key to attaining retirement security. However, workers also need access to retirement plans – so they can continue to accumulate resources – and health insurance – so they can avoid withdrawing assets in the event of a health shock. Yet, despite the fact that a large literature focuses on nontraditional jobs that often lack these benefits, it is unclear how older workers use these jobs and what the consequences are. This paper uses the Health and Retirement Study to identify nontraditional jobs and relies on sequence analysis to explore how workers ages 50-62 use them. The results suggest that the majority of nontraditional jobs are used by workers consistently, and that fewer workers use these jobs briefly or as a bridge to retirement. In the end, workers consistently in nontraditional jobs end up with less retirement income and are also worse off by a more holistic measure of well-being – the incidence of depression. Given this situation, expanding benefits to workers in non-traditional jobs could increase their well-being in retirement.

Suggested Citation

  • Alicia H. Munnell & Geoffrey T. Sanzenbacher & Abigail N. Walters, 2019. "How do Older Workers use Nontraditional Jobs?," NBER Working Papers 26379, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26379
    Note: AG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w26379.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard W. Johnson & Janette Kawachi, 2007. "Job Changes at Older Ages: Effects on Wages, Benefits, and Other Job Attributes," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2007-04, Center for Retirement Research, revised Feb 2007.
    2. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2016. "The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015," NBER Working Papers 22667, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kevin E. Cahill & Michael D. Giandrea & Joseph F. Quinn, 2011. "How Does Occupational Status Impact Bridge Job Prevalence?," Working Papers 447, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    4. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2019. "Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States," NBER Working Papers 25425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elisabeth Beusch & Arthur Soest, 2020. "Labour Market Trajectories of the Self-employed in the Netherlands," De Economist, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 109-146, March.
    2. Michael Papadopoulos, 2020. "Reservation Wages and Work Arrangements: Evidence From The American Life Panel," SCEPA working paper series. 2020-01, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    3. Cheryl Carleton & Mary T. Kelly, 2022. "Happy at Work - Possible at Any Age?," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 51, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    2. Datta, Nikhil, 2019. "Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103390, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Bracha, Anat & Burke, Mary A., 2021. "How Big is the Gig? The Extensive Margin, The Intensive Margin, and The Hidden Margin," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    4. Cody Cook & Rebecca Diamond & Jonathan V Hall & John A List & Paul Oyer, 2021. "The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers [Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(5), pages 2210-2238.
    5. Nikhil Datta, 2019. "Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences," CEP Discussion Papers dp1632, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    6. Broten, Nicholas & Dworsky, Michael & Powell, David, 2022. "Do temporary workers experience additional employment and earnings risk after workplace injuries?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    7. Nikhil Datta & Giulia Giupponi & Stephen Machin, 2019. "Zero-hours contracts and labour market policy," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 34(99), pages 369-427.
    8. Sheena McConnell & Peter Z. Schochet & Dana Rotz & Ken Fortson & Paul Burkander & Annalisa Mastri, 2021. "The Effects of Employment Counseling on Labor Market Outcomes for Adults and Dislocated Workers: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Experiment," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 1249-1287, September.
    9. Lipovská Hana, 2019. "Alan Krueger: Worker in the Vineyard of Economics," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 13(1), pages 46-49, June.
    10. Melissa Mack & Kate Dunham, "undated". "A Scan of Key Trends in the Labor Market and Workforce Development System," Mathematica Policy Research Reports fd8472731375429d8baa04602, Mathematica Policy Research.
    11. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    12. Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Matthieu Lequien & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2017. "Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning," CEP Discussion Papers dp1516, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    13. Werner Eichhorst & Ulf Rinne, 2017. "Digital Challenges for the Welfare State," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(04), pages 03-08, December.
    14. Truc Thi Mai Bui & Patrick Button & Elyce G. Picciotti, 2020. "Early Evidence on the Impact of COVID-19 and the Recession on Older Workers," NBER Working Papers 27448, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Rosa Abraham, 2017. "Informality in the Indian Labour Market: An Analysis of Forms and Determinants," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 60(2), pages 191-215, June.
    16. Konstantinos Pouliakas & Wieteke S. Conen, 2023. "Multiple job-holding: Career pathway or dire straits?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 3562-3562, December.
    17. Gimenez-Nadal, José Ignacio & Molina, José Alberto & Sevilla, Almudena, 2021. "Temporal Flexibility, Breaks at Work, and the Motherhood Wage Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14578, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Tracy Anderson & Matthew Bidwell, 2019. "Outside Insiders: Understanding the Role of Contracting in the Careers of Managerial Workers," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 1000-1029, September.
    19. Devillanova, Carlo & Raitano, Michele & Struffolino, Emanuela, 2019. "Longitudinal employment trajectories and health in middle life: Insights from linked administrative and survey data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 40, pages 1375-1412.
    20. Katharine G. Abraham & Brad Hershbein & Susan N. Houseman & Beth C. Truesdale, 2024. "The Independent Contractor Workforce: New Evidence on Its Size and Composition and Ways to Improve Its Measurement in Household Surveys," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 77(3), pages 336-365, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26379. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.