Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Precarious employment has allegedly been on the rise for a decades in North America. However, official statistics are poorly designed to measure precarious employment. Without a valid and reliable measure of employment precarity, it is difficult to know its extent and change. In turn, makes it difficult to advance policies that would reduce employment precarity, or know if such policies were effective. One of the more insightful attempts at measurement has been introduced by McMaster University’s Dr. Wayne Lewchuk in the form of an employment precarity index. Drawing on a random sample of 713 residents of Canada’s Niagara region conducted in 2017, we measure the intensity and distribution of employment precarity using the Lewchuk index of employment precarity. Our research corroborates the usefulness of his index in helping disentangle the harmful effects of employment precarity independent of individual and household income.