Low-Waged Hourly Employment as a Form of Precarious Work: Racial and Ethnic Disparity and Its Implications

Abstract

While research on non-standard scheduling has grown in recent decades, less attention has been paid to its broader category—precarious hourly employment. Utilizing longitudinal U.S. Current Population Survey data (2017–2024), this study investigates racial and ethnic disparities in exposure to low-waged hourly work, the mechanisms behind these disparities, and their financial impacts. We find that workers of color, except Asians, are at heightened risk of low-waged hourly employment. A large proportion of this disparity remains unexplained by our models, suggesting underlying discrimination or structural inequalities, with some variation by race and gender. Among the mediated/indirect effects, underrepresentation in college degree holders and managerial/professional roles explain most of the disparity. Our counterfactual causal estimation also demonstrates that precarious hourly employment significantly reduces compensable work hours and earnings per hour, thus potentially affecting nonwhite workers disproportionately and exacerbating racial inequalities in the workplace.