Study looks at job stability in region

Quarter of workers in Niagara in precarious jobs say researchers

Consider some questions about your job.

Do you get paid if you miss a day of work? Do you have one employer and do you expect to work for them a year from now? Do you have benefits? Do you know your work schedule at least a week in advance?

If you answered “No” to all of these, your employment would be defined as precarious by a new study that was done by Brock University researchers in partnership with the United Way.

The study, titled “Uncertain Jobs, Certain Impacts: Employment precarity in Niagara,” is the first of it’s kind to take a close look at unstable work in the region.

The study found that around 25 per cent of employed persons in Niagara work at unstable jobs, with about another 25 per cent working jobs classified as “vulnerable” — jobs that are somewhat more stable than those defined as precarious.

The study is also the first time precarious work in Niagara — a term used to describe jobs that carry with them a high degree of uncertainty — has been defined in a specific way, said John Butovsky Brock University associate professor of sociology and one of the study’s lead researchers.

The study was based on a scientific telephone survey conducted in 2017, and asked respondents 10 questions about their employment, ranging from how much a person’s income varied to work hours and scheduling.

The answers scored to give each person a rank of zero to 100, with zero being the most stable employment situation and 100 being the most unstable, or precarious. Answering “no” to four of the 10 questions is enough for an employment situation to be classified as precarious.

The more times a person answered “no” the higher their score.

“So I would score a zero,” said Butovsky, who presented the report’s findings Friday afternoon at Brock with Jeff Boggs, the other lead researcher and associate professor of geography and tourism.

“I would answer to yes to these questions. Yes, I know my schedule, yes, I know my hours and so on.”

Boggs and Butovsky said the survey found that about half of Niagara residents working from April 1, 2016 to March 31st 2017, were employed in vulnerable or outright precarious work, where their future earnings or employment was not certain.

The results of the Niagara study were similar to those found in studies done in Hamilton and other GTA communities.

Although precarious employment doesn’t automatically mean low wages, it typically does and the uncertainty of the situation creates high levels of anxiety and the negative health and social impacts that come with it, the report says.

The full report by the pair from Brock can be found online at www.pepniagara.ca.