The Impacts of Predictive Scheduling Laws

Abstract

We study the consequences of predictive scheduling laws for wages, emmployment, hours, and the variability of hours worked. A number of states and municipalities have recently passed these laws, which require employers to give their employees advance notice before of their schedules. We are interested in both the first stage, whether these laws succeed in making worker schedules more predictable, as well as the downstream consequences for wages, total employment and hours. We use data from US cell phone pings to quantify the volatility of schedules, and complement and validate this using time clock data from a payroll services provider. We document novel descriptives about the volatility of worker schedules and find small positive impacts of these laws on volatility.