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123 Monthly Lab. Rev. 33 (2000)
Flexible Schedules and Shift Work: Replacing the 9-to-5 Workday

handle is hein.journals/month123 and id is 567 raw text is: Flexible schedules and shift work: replacing the '9-to-5' workday? Flexible work hours have gained in prominence, as more than a quarter of all workers can now vary their schedules; however, there has been little change in the proportion who work a shift other than a regular daytime shift raditionally, much of the American labor force has worked in a structured environ- ment, with the work schedule following a set pattern-what many people have termed the 9-to-5 workday. Recent studies show that em- ployers are beginning to recognize that many workers prefer schedules that allow greater flexibility in choosing the times they begin and end their workday. Consequently, increasing numbers and proportions of full-time workers in the United States are able to opt for flexible work hours, allowing workers to vary the ac- tual times they arrive and leave the work place. For some workers, however, the nature of their jobs requires that they work a schedule other than a regular day shift, what may be termed an alternative shift.' Examples of such alter- native shift workers are police officers, emer- gency room physicians, and assembly-line workers at a factory. In contrast to the increasing proportion of workers with flexible work schedules, the inci- dence of shift work has not changed since the mid-1980s. If not for the sizable job gains in service occupations, the overall proportion of workers on shift work would have edged down in recent years. Recent data on flexible work hours and shift work are from information collected in the May 1997 supplement to the Current Population Sur- vey (cps).2 This article uses that supplement to examine both the incidence and trends in flexible work hours and alternative shift work and, also, the relationship between the jobs in which people work and the prevalence of these digressions from the more traditional 9-to-5 workday. Flexible work schedules In 1997, more than 25 million workers, or 27.6 percent of all full-time wage and salary work- ers varied their work hours to some degree. Note that flexible schedule arrangements for many workers are probably informal, as indi- cated by data from the Bureau of Labor Statis- tics Employee Benefits Survey (EBS), in which employers provide information about em- ployee access to various types of work-related benefits. The latest EBS data, from 1994-97, show that less than 6 percent of employees have for- mal flexible work schedule arrangements.3 cPs data show that the proportion of work- ers on flexible work schedules-either formal or informal-has more than doubled since 1985, when such data were first collected. The increase in flexible work schedules since then has been widespread across demographic groups. The following tabulation shows the percent of workers, by age and race and His- panic origin, who work flexible schedules: Monthly Labor Review June 2000 33 Thomas M. Beers Thomas M. Beers is an economist in the Division of Labor Force Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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