Nature of Work Has Changed

Californians are moving in and out of jobs at a rapid pace, and a surprisingly small fraction of workers holds a traditional daytime job away from home, according to a study that shows how the new economy is dramatically changing the nature of work.

Four out of 10 workers have been at their jobs for less than three years, the study says, reflecting a high degree of churning in a booming, high-tech economy that continues to displace many workers while even more are being hired.

Strikingly, just one-third of all workers in California now conform to the stereotypical notion of employment: working outside the home at a single, full-time job year-round as a daytime employee, according to the survey of 2,044 California adults, being released today.

Although most sensed long ago that such traditional workers were becoming fewer, analysts said they could never have imagined that share to have fallen so low. And remember the Cleaver family in “Leave it to Beaver,” in which there was just one breadwinner (accountant Ward Cleaver) basically working nine to five in the same job? Today that picture fits only 8% of California households.

“We all believed we were on the way to this kind of transition,” said Ed Yelin, a professor at UC San Francisco who led the 1999 California Work and Health Survey. “But it’s clear from the data that we’re already there.”

Internet, Other Factors Cause Profound Shifts

The researchers said they were unaware of any other study that constructed such a broad definition of traditional work and measured the extent that Californians engaged in such jobs. That just one-third fit this conventional mode, economists said, suggested a profound reorganization of workaday life for many--a trend pushed by such factors as the Internet, the growth in home-based workers and changing shopping patterns, particularly among women.

“The [one-third] number is absolutely stunning,” said Stephen Levy, an economist at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto and one of a dozen advisors to the university study.

“It’s very much consumer-driven,” he said. With more women working today and people increasingly wanting to shop, bank and sell stock at any time of the day, Levy said, that has forced supermarkets to open 24 hours and many other businesses to extend their hours into the night. “That means people have to work those hours,” he said.

Nancy Sidhu, a Bank of America economist in Los Angeles, remembers when retailers in the 1960s stayed open only one evening a week. Not today. “People are finding they can’t work and accomplish these chores at the same time,” Sidhu said, adding that she buys books and items like socks online during her Sunday afternoons.

The university survey, conducted this summer by the Field Institute in San Francisco, found that three out of 10 working Californians were doing so at home at least part of the time, including 6% who said all their work was home-based.

The share of traditional workers was whittled further by those not working year-round, which accounted for a quarter of the labor force, and the 12% who reported holding multiple jobs.

A separate analysis for Los Angeles County showed that here an even smaller share of workers, 29%, met this definition of traditional worker--a difference perhaps partly explained by the county’s large number of contract or seasonal workers in industries from entertainment to the garment business.

As expected, the survey substantiated the benefits many Californians have derived in the long-expanding economy. Four of 10 workers said they had received a promotion or moved into a better job within the past year, with traditional workers more likely to be in this group. And overall, 60% reported earning more than they did last year, although the degree of improvement was not measured.

But the survey findings corroborated other recent studies that suggest that even in these good times, a substantial portion of the work force is facing disruption and hardship, particularly minorities.

About 30% of Latinos in California are living in poverty despite having full-time work throughout the year, according to the survey. One of six workers said they believed they were laid off, not promoted or not hired because of discrimination based on sex, race, age or disability.

In telephone interviews in English and Spanish, a full 20% of workers said they had lost or left their jobs through layoffs or anticipated layoffs in the past three years. One in 10 reported being effectively displaced within the last year--a strikingly big figure given California’s employment of nearly 16 million.

Predictably, the poorly educated were far more likely to lose their jobs, as were those in traditionally high-turnover occupations such as clerical and sales. The survey, though, did not provide evidence that dislocations have risen among those on the bottom, and analysts indicated that the continued high levels of job cuts in California were being borne largely by mid-level managers and professionals, who are getting re-employed fairly quickly.

The UC San Francisco study, the second of a three-year project funded by the California Wellness Foundation, included interviews this year with about 900 Californians who were also polled last year. When analyzing those respondents’ answers over that one-year period, researchers learned that those who had lost their jobs in the last year were twice as prone to experience a decline in health. Conversely, people who reported less than good health a year ago were significantly more likely to be displaced in the following year.