Employment, Day Labor, and Shadow Work Among Homeless Assistance Clients in the United States

Abstract

Due to various barriers that keep homeless people away from regular work, a considerable proportion of them resort to day labor or subsistence “work,” such as peddling and panhandling, to earn income. Using the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients (NSHAPC) data, this study compares the personal characteristics of currently homeless and nonhomeless persons and examines how demographic characteristics, physical health and mental health problems, and substance abuse affect the employment status and income-earning approaches of homeless assistance clients. It finally provides suggestions for public assistance programs and future research.

Keywords:

• homelessness
• work
• day labor
• peddling
• panhandling
• health
• substance abuse

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author thanks Dr. James Wright, Dr. Heili Pals, and Dr. Amy Donley for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. The three groups overlapped with each other because some homeless people perform two or three types of work simultaneously to gain sufficient income to survive.

2. 62.6% is smaller than 22.5% + 29.9% + 54.1% = 106.5% because there were overlaps between homeless people who were involved in different types of work. 43.9% (= 22.5% + 29.9% + 54.1% – 62.6%) of homeless people combine two or three types of working approaches to gain income.

3. A major complication in comparing unemployment rate among homelessness and the poor is that unemployment figures for the general population omit people who are not in the labor force, but the calculation of unemployment among the homeless often includes this group.

4. Many companies test for drug use as a condition of employment. Many addicts are aware of this and therefore do not even seek mainstream employment.