Barely half of working adults in the GTA and Hamilton have full-time jobs with benefits and expect to be working for their current employer a year from now, according to a groundbreaking report on precarious work and household well-being.

The other half are working either full- or part-time with no benefits or no job security, or in temporary, contract or casual positions, says the report by McMaster University and United Way Toronto being released Saturday.

It notes that ‘precarious’ or insecure work in the region has increased by 50 per cent in the past 20 years and is impacting everything from people’s decision to form relationships, have children and volunteer in their community.

Precarious work has implications for economic well-being and job security, says the report.

“But it also reaches out and touches family and social life,” it says. “It can affect how people socialize and how much they are able to give back to their communities. It can cause tensions at home.”

One of the report’s most startling findings is that up to half of insecure workers are living in middle-income households earning between $50,000 and $100,000, says one of the report’s lead researchers.

“We know that precarious work arrangements are common in low-income households,” said McMaster University labour and economics professor Wayne Lewchuk .

“What we didn’t expect to see was how much precarious work has crept into middle-income households,” he said. “The impact is even being felt in upper-income levels.”

These “stressed-out” middle-income workers are often found in universities and colleges as contract lecturers and research assistants, in hospitals and government as contract nurses and office staff, and in non-profit agencies where those on the front-lines rely on time-limited grants to pay their wages.

Low-income workers in unstable jobs are typically employed by temporary agencies that pay minimum wage, with no benefits or security. They can also be found in the fast-food, cleaning and service sector and in manufacturing where they are often “on call,” and uncertain of their work hours or weekly schedule. Lack of job security often makes these workers reluctant to report or refuse work they consider dangerous, the report notes.

Across all income groups, the report found “clear indications” that insecure work is causing increasing household stress and limiting people’s ability to participate in their communities.

“The findings . . . raise serious concerns regarding the potential breakdown of social structures as precarious employment becomes more of the norm in Canadian society,” the report says.

Some question whether the report’s definition of ‘precarious employment’ is too broad. For example, the self-employed who choose to run their own businesses may not know a year from now if they will have a job. And yet they are also considered precariously employed by the study.

“But I think it is the start of a necessary conversation we need to have,” says Jamison Steeve of the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute .

Steeve, who left his position as principal secretary to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty last spring, is among a dozen academic, labour, business and community members who will be panellists at a Toronto symposium on the report on Monday.

“In the session on Monday . . . we’re going to have a chance to look at that definition and develop policies that are going to help the most affected,” he says.

The report, which surveyed 4,000 working adults between the ages of 25 and 65 and conducted in-depth interviews with 100 of them, is part of a five-year, $1-million research project on precarious employment in Southern Ontario, funded by the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

The project’s goal is to document the characteristics and prevalence of unstable employment and show how society is changing as a result. The current report looks at household well-being and community participation, while future research will try to assess the economic impact and recommend solutions.

“If we have people . . . who are not working to their full potential, then that is an economic issue,” says Steeve

“If the nature of the workforce has changed so dramatically but our laws and social structures have not, then we’re not leveraging all of the economic benefits,” he adds.

United Way Toronto first sounded the alarm on precarious employment in its , 2007 report Losing Ground , which showed how the phenomenon was aggravating social problems.

“While we knew from Losing Ground there was an issue, we wanted to understand the complexity and the actual complexion of the issue,” says United Way President Susan McIsaac . “Is this episodic in people’s lives, or is this a new trend in what employment looks like in the province and in particular the Toronto and Hamilton regions?”

The ongoing research will help the charity focus its community investments and advocacy for the future, she adds.

European countries have been documenting the shift to precarious work for some time, Lewchuk says.

“As far as we can tell, there is no research like this in North America, certainly not in Canada,” he says. “The idea is to build a database to track precarious employment and dig deeper into its impact here.”

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Precarious employment compounds the impact of poverty, Lewchuk says. But, as the study shows, it also hurts middle-income households.

“Financial resources help to mitigate the destabilizing effects of precarious work,” he says. “But we found that in some cases, middle-income households with precarious work are under more stress than low-income households with secure employment.”

The report expands the common definition of precarious employment — typically described as seasonal, temporary or casual — to include the self-employed without employees, such as truck drivers, people offering child care in their homes or freelance editors. By that measure, about one in five Toronto and Hamilton area workers is precariously employed. When the researchers added part-time and full-time workers without benefits or job security, the rate jumped to half of the area’s workers.

Non-whites and newcomers in Canada less than 20 years were more likely to be in insecure work, as were those aged 25 to 35 and over age 55.

“Regardless of a worker’s personal characteristics, work sector or the region they live in, there is a reasonable chance that their employment will have many of the characteristics of precarious employment,” the report says.

Unlike poverty, which is often concentrated in certain neighbourhoods, precarious work is found in both high- and low-income regions, the report adds.

Labour law and income security programs were designed in the postwar era when precarious work was rare and employers were largely responsible for training, benefits and pensions, Lewchuk notes. The report points to the need for a new set of policies to limit the spread of unstable employment or mitigate its negative effects.

The impact of unstable work on personal and family life is profound, the report found. For example, people in low-income precarious jobs are less likely to have a close friend to talk to or to help with small jobs than those in more secure employment.

Workers in unstable jobs are less likely to have children. Men, in particular, reported they put off having a family due to insecure employment. These workers find it more difficult to find child care, help their children attend extracurricular activities and pay for school supplies and trips. At lower incomes, they are more likely to run into trouble paying for food.

Researchers also heard that income uncertainty makes it hard to commit to family or community activities.

They heard that precarious work is becoming even more unstable. For example, workers reported that it is no longer common for temporary agency work to lead to full-time jobs. And wage premiums to compensate for the lack of benefits and permanency are now rare. Most temp work pays the $10.25 hourly minimum wage.

More than 80 per cent of those in precarious employment do not receive any benefits, making them vulnerable to unexpected life circumstance such as illness, injury, or premature retirement, the report notes. Those who do get benefits often don’t have family coverage.

Workers often feel powerless to complain or turn down hours or assignments for fear of losing the job or the next contract, the report says.

They are also more likely to work multiple jobs in a year and often juggle more than one at a time. It means increased transit time, more difficulties organizing child care and less family time.