The Civic Footprints of Labor Market Participation: Longitudinal Evidence from the United States, 2002–2015

Abstract

While there is a widespread belief that stable employment is important for social integration, stable employment careers have become less common in America's increasingly complex labor market. Job tenure has dropped, precarious work arrangements have gained prominence, longterm unemployment has spiked, and an increasing share of the jobless are not looking for work. Against this background, we investigate the linkages between labor market experiences and volunteer activities, as indicator of people's involvement in civic life. We outline a theory on how transitions between labor market states-within, into, and out of the labor force-bring about changes in civic engagement and test our predictions using panel data from the Current Population Survey 2002-2015. Contrary to what much previous research suggests, we find that people who become unemployed are more likely to start volunteering and no more likely to stop. We additionally show that people who leave the labor force altogether (i.e., not having a job nor looking for one) are more likely to stop volunteering. Conversely, entering the labor force, either by securing or searching for a job, is associated with an increase in volunteer activities. We explore the role of motivation and time resources in accounting for these patterns, finding among other things that moving into or out of the most detached labor market stateoutside the labor force without any intention to find work-is most consequential for civic engagement. We discuss the implications of our findings for civic democracy in light of ongoing labor market trends.

Hours of Paid Work and Volunteering: Evidence From Danish Panel Data

“…A very recent panel study is Wiertz and Lim (2019), who drew on the CPS in the 2002 to 2015 period to construct a large panel data set. Unfortunately, the study examined only the relationship between employment states and a binary variable that indicates whether or not the individual volunteers but not for how many hours.…”

“…One possible explanation for the counterintuitive results that have been obtained in previous studies is that people who work long paid work schedules are more likely to enjoy flexible working arrangements than people who work shorter schedules (Golden, 2001). This could explain why it has been observed that large increases in paid work hours positively affect the decision to start to volunteer (Wiertz & Lim, 2019) and that volunteers who work overtime contribute more hours than volunteers who work fulltime (Rotolo & Wilson, 2007).…”

“…The debate between the two competing theories has yet to be settled by sufficiently persuasive empirical evidence. With two strong exceptions (Rotolo & Wilson, 2007;Wiertz & Lim, 2019), the previous evidence comprises studies that use cross-sectional or pooled cross-sectional data. The estimates from these studies are most likely uninformative about the causal effect of hours of paid work on volunteering because they cannot address the bias that arises as people's current participation in volunteering is related to past participation in volunteering.…”

Reconciling Theory and Context in Comparative Nonprofit Research

“…In the wake of the recession, the coupling of volunteering with incomes may be weakened because, in the wake of the recession, there may be an increase in volunteering but a decrease in earnings. Interestingly, Wiertz and Lim (2019) found that when people become unemployed, they are more likely to start volunteering and less likely to stop, thus decoupling volunteering and financial returns. Local contexts may also mitigate or exacerbate the effect of the recession on the volunteering-income correlation.…”

Experiences of white‐collar job loss and job‐searching in the United States

“…During unemployment, these latent functions do not get fulfilled, leading to a tremendous sense of apathy in individuals. Scholars have extended Jahoda's work to assert that rather than employment/unemployment, entry into and out of the labor force is now more critically linked to the latent functions that employment had typically provided (Wiertz & Lim 2019).…”