Odd Jobs

What percentage of workers work nonstandard hours--primarily outside the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday time period? Cross-sectional studies suggest that about 20 percent of workers have nonstandard hours at any one time. But a new analysis of longitudinal data published in the Monthly Labor Review shows that most workers have had a job with nonstandard hours over their work life.

Examining data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which tracked a nationally representative sample of 14-to-22-year-olds and followed them for more than two decades (through 2004), researchers Harriet B. Presser and Brian W. Ward discovered that 89 percent of workers had worked at a job with nonstandard hours by the time they reached age 40.