Relationship between occupational, industrial, and sociodemographic characteristics and job start times: Evidence from current population survey

Alternative work arrangements and unconventional shift schedules are increasingly becoming a part of the economy. Temporal mismatch problems occur when individuals who are traditionally transit dependent do not have access to potential job locations during off-peak times. The Current Population Survey is used to examine the relationships between job start times and a set of sociodemographic, occupational, and industrial characteristics. A binary response variable, conventional and unconventional start times, gives preliminary insight into the nature of these relationships. A detailed multinomial logit model gives more in-depth insight by analyzing the discrete choice of job start times during unconventional hours, such as the p.m. hours, night hours, or midday, relative to a baseline daytime shift. In addition, probabilities of working in jobs with alternative start times are developed for a set of hypothetical workers with key sociodemographic profiles. It is concluded that workers are self-selected into certain occupations in specific industries by their skills, education, and other workforce factors. The nature of jobs has implications for work schedules and alternative work arrangements. The ability to select certain schedules and the work arrangement of choice therefore is conditional on being employed in those types of jobs. Thus, there appears to be some type of simultaneity between the type of occupation and work schedules. It appears that policies to address the temporal mismatch problem are partly an issue of workforce development (so that workers can seek jobs in more work-arrangement-friendly occupations) and partly a transportation problem.