Since the 1980s, the global labor market — including the U.S. — has shifted toward precarious employment, characterized by instability, volatility, and unpredictability. Although such work is often portrayed as a temporary “stepping stone,” longitudinal research spanning three decades reveals a different reality: for many workers, precarious employment becomes a permanent trap with serious health consequences that emerge in midlife and persist into later adulthood.
In this McSilver Speaker Series event, Dr. Wen-Jui Han will present findings from her research examining how the unstable nature of contemporary work functions as a “sticky floor,” producing cumulative and long-term health harms. Using work schedules as an example, she will illustrate how volatility — particularly unpredictable hours and shift instability — disrupts sleep and undermines both physical and mental health over time.
Dr. Han will also discuss how these burdens are not distributed equally. Racial and ethnic minority groups and women disproportionately shoulder the health consequences of precarious employment. At the same time, income serves as a critical protective buffer, helping to cushion some of the adverse health effects associated with unstable work.
Register to attend online via Zoom or in-person at the NYU Silver School Parlor
Speakers
Wen-Jui Han is a Professor at NYU Silver. She has extensive knowledge and skills from multidisciplinary training in sociology, developmental psychology, economics, and public policy. The ultimate goal of Dr. Han’s research is to advance our understanding of factors that will improve the well-being of children and their families. To this end, Dr. Han has investigated relationships between parental behaviors and child health and development as well as the effects of policies on parental behaviors and child outcomes. Specifically, Dr. Han has studied the determinants of parental employment, parental leave, and child care, and the impact that these factors have on child and adolescent development. Recently, Dr. Han has been investigating the roles of precarious employment as a social determinant of health to the well-being of the workers and their families from both the prevention and intervention perspectives in the hopes of (re)shaping our conversations about the critical roles of work in shaing our daily experience and thus our health and well-being.