Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Short Hours, Long Hours: Hour Levels And Trends In The Retail Industry In The United States, Canada, And Mexico, Françoise Carré, Chris Tilly

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In settings where most workers have full-time schedules, hourly wages are appropriate primary indicators of job quality and worker outcomes. However, in sectors where full-time schedules do not dominate—primarily service-producing activities—total hours matter, in addition to hourly wages, for job quality and worker outcomes. In this paper we employ a sector-focused, comparative framework to further examine hours levels—measured as average weekly hours—and trends in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. We analyze the retail sector, which is of interest because of its high rate of part-time employment in the U.S. Based on our fieldwork in the United States and Mexico …