IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upj/weupjo/19-315.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Making Ends Meet: The Role of Informal Work in Supplementing Americans’ Income

Author

Listed:
  • Katharine G. Abraham

    (University of Maryland)

  • Susan N. Houseman

    (W.E. Upjohn Institute)

Abstract

Data from the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking indicate that, over the course of a month, more than one-quarter of adults engage in some informal work outside of a main job. Of these, about two-thirds say that they do informal work to earn money and about one-third say that informal work is an important source of household income. Informal work plays a particularly important role in the household finances of minorities, the less educated, those experiencing financial hardship, those who work part time involuntarily, independent contractors, and the unemployed. Aggregate earnings from informal work are modest but help many households to make ends meet. Informal work cannot compensate, however, for the lack of benefits typical of part-time and contractor work.

Suggested Citation

  • Katharine G. Abraham & Susan N. Houseman, 2019. "Making Ends Meet: The Role of Informal Work in Supplementing Americans’ Income," Upjohn Working Papers 19-315, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:19-315
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/rsfjss/5/5/110.full.pdf
    Download Restriction: All working papers are copyrighted.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2016. "The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015," NBER Working Papers 22667, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Cody Cook & Rebecca Diamond & Jonathan V Hall & John A List & Paul Oyer, 2021. "The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers [Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(5), pages 2210-2238.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Charlene Marie Kalenkoski & Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia, 2022. "Impacts of COVID-19 on the self-employed," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 741-768, February.
    2. Abraham, Katharine G. & Hershbein, Brad & Houseman, Susan N., 2021. "Contract work at older ages," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(3), pages 426-447, July.
    3. Katharine G. Abraham & Brad Hershbein & Susan N. Houseman & Beth C. Truesdale, 2024. "The Independent Contractor Workforce: New Evidence on Its Size and Composition and Ways to Improve Its Measurement in Household Surveys," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 77(3), pages 336-365, May.
    4. Sung‐Hee Jeon & Huju Liu & Yuri Ostrovsky, 2021. "Measuring the gig economy in Canada using administrative data," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 1638-1666, November.
    5. Sachiko KURODA & Koichiro ONISHI, 2023. "Exploring the Gig Economy in Japan: A bank data-driven analysis of food delivery gig workers," Discussion papers 23025, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brice Corgnet & Simon Gaechter & Roberto Hernan Gonzalez, 2020. "Working Too Much for Too Little: Stochastic Rewards Cause Work Addiction," Discussion Papers 2020-03, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    2. Maria Cesira Urzi Brancati & Annarosa Pesole & Enrique Férnandéz-Macías, 2020. "New evidence on platform workers in Europe: Results from the second COLLEEM survey," JRC Research Reports JRC118570, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Bäckman, Claes & Hanspal, Tobin, 2018. "Participation and Losses in Multi-Level Marketing: Evidence from an FTC Settlement," Working Papers 2018:13, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 22 Aug 2019.
    4. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    5. Aghion, Philippe & Akcigit, Ufuk & Lequien, Matthieu & Stantcheva, Stefanie, 2017. "Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86613, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Werner Eichhorst & Ulf Rinne, 2017. "Digital Challenges for the Welfare State," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(04), pages 03-08, December.
    7. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2023. "Scientific Background to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2023-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    8. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    9. Chadi, Adrian & Hetschko, Clemens, 2025. "Income or leisure? On the hidden benefits of (un)employment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    10. Julian Kolev & Yuly Fuentes-Medel & Fiona Murray, 2019. "Is Blinded Review Enough? How Gendered Outcomes Arise Even Under Anonymous Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 25759, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Chen, Xinwei & Wang, Tong & Thomas, Barrett W. & Ulmer, Marlin W., 2023. "Same-day delivery with fair customer service," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(2), pages 738-751.
    12. Rosa Abraham, 2017. "Informality in the Indian Labour Market: An Analysis of Forms and Determinants," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 60(2), pages 191-215, June.
    13. Datta, Nikhil, 2019. "Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103390, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Konstantinos Pouliakas & Wieteke S. Conen, 2023. "Multiple job-holding: Career pathway or dire straits?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 3562-3562, December.
    15. Gimenez-Nadal, José Ignacio & Molina, José Alberto & Sevilla, Almudena, 2021. "Temporal Flexibility, Breaks at Work, and the Motherhood Wage Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14578, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Tracy Anderson & Matthew Bidwell, 2019. "Outside Insiders: Understanding the Role of Contracting in the Careers of Managerial Workers," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 1000-1029, September.
    17. Devillanova, Carlo & Raitano, Michele & Struffolino, Emanuela, 2019. "Longitudinal employment trajectories and health in middle life: Insights from linked administrative and survey data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 40, pages 1375-1412.
    18. Alan B. Krueger, 2018. "Independent Workers: What Role for Public Policy?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 675(1), pages 8-25, January.
    19. Holzer, Harry J., 2019. "The US Labor Market in 2050: Supply, Demand and Policies to Improve Outcomes," IZA Policy Papers 148, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Inga Laß & Mark Wooden, 2019. "Non-standard Employment and Wages in Australia," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2019-04, Reserve Bank of Australia, revised Jul 2019.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    informal work; gig work; independent contractors; income adequacy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J46 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Informal Labor Market
    • J48 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Particular Labor Markets; Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:19-315. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/upjohus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.