Steady Jobs, With Pay and Hours That Are Anything But

More and more employees across a growing range of industries find the number of hours they work is swinging giddily from week to week — bringing chaos not only to family scheduling, but also to family finances. And a new wave of research shows that the main culprit is not the so-called gig economy, but shifting pay within the same job.

. . . “Since the 1970s, steady work that pays a predictable and living wage has become increasingly difficult to find,” said Jonathan Morduch, Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., and Annette L. Nazareth Member in the School of Social Science and a director of the U.S. Financial Diaries project, an in-depth study of 235 low- and moderate-income households. “This shift has left many more families vulnerable to income volatility.”