The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality Among US Workers: 1980-2018

Joshua Greenstein

No 1911, Working Papers from New School for Social Research, Department of Economics

Abstract: I apply the precariat class schema developed by Standing to the US workforce from 1980-2018. I use a decomposition of inequality to show that this schema explains a substantial and growing portion of income inequality. I find that that the precariat, typified by unstable and benefit-free jobs, make up a large and growing share of the US work force, that the “old” working class shrank precipitously, and that the demographics of these two classes differ substantially. Finally, I illustrate that insight into these difficult to measure phenomena can be gained with an easily replicable class schema using plausible class definitions.

Keywords: Economic class; precarious labor; inequality; dDistribution; structural change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B59 D63 J21 J42 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/econ/2019/NSSR_WP_112019.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:new:wpaper:1911

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from New School for Social Research, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Setterfield ().