The labor market is the site of longstanding and persistent inequalities across race and gender groups in hiring, compensation, and advancement. In this paper, we draw on data from 13,574 hourly service-sector workers to extend the study of intersectional labor market inequalities to workers' experience on the job. In the service sector, where workers are regularly expected to be on their feet for long hours and to contend with workloads that are intense and unrelenting, regular break time is an essential component of job quality and general well-being. Yet, we find that Black women are less likely than their counterparts to get a break during their work shift. Although union membership and laws mandating work breaks are effective in increasing access to breaks for workers overall, they do not ameliorate the inequality Black women face in access to work breaks within the service sector. A sobering implication is that worker power and labor protections can raise the floor on working conditions but leave inequalities intact. Our findings also have implications for racial health inequalities, as the routine daily stress of service sector takes a disproportionate toll on the health of Black women.
Little is known about the labor market consequences of becoming a grandparent. We estimate grandparenthood effects on labor supply and earnings using detailed multigenerational data from Danish population registers. Results show that the consequences of grandparenthood are unequally distributed and starkly patterned. Becoming a grandparent reduces hours worked and income, especially for grandmothers, more so when the grandchild is born to a daughter, and most when the grandmother's daughter gives birth as a teenager. Grandfathers also experience a reduction in hours worked (but not income) from their daughter's teen birth, but the reduction is much smaller than among grandmothers. The effects of a daughter's teen birth are further amplified for low-income grandmothers. Our results imply that childbearing has multigenerational consequences that are structured by gendered caregiving, the caregiving needs of the parent generation, and the delegating capacity of the grandparent generation.

