New York is the city that never sleeps. But this renowned insomnia would not be possible without the more than 200,000 men and women who work the nightshift – the fry cooks and coffee jockeys, train conductors and cab hacks, cops, docs, and fishmongers selling cod by the crate. Inverting the natural rhythm of life, they keep the city running as it slows but never stops.

In our book, NIGHTSHIFT NYC, we tell the stories of New York City nightshift workers. This ethnography of the night investigates familiar sites, such as diners, delis and taxis, as well as some unexpected corners of the night, such as a walking tour of homelessness in Manhattan and a fishing boat out of Brooklyn. We show how the nightshift is more than simply out of phase, it is another social space altogether, highly structured, inherently subversive, and shot through with inequalities of power. NIGHTSHIFT NYC presents the narratives of those who sleep too little and work too much, revealing the soul of a city hidden in the graveyard shift of 24-hour commerce when the sun goes down and the lights come up.

But there is more to the story than found its way into the pages of the book. Here you'll find more stories of the night in New York City and around the country. And we hope you will add your own stories and comments in the months to come. Stay tuned and check back often...

Monday, May 12, 2008

Who works the night...

15 million people in the United States work “alternative shifts” in the evenings or nights. In 2004, this accounted for 14.8 percent of the labor force. The majority of these alternate shift workers work “evening shifts,” which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) delineates as working between the hours of 2 p.m. and midnight. The BLS classifies nightshift employees as those whose shifts fit somewhere between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. In 1997, those who regularly worked the nightshift accounted for 3.5 percent of full-time employees. In 2004, 3.2 percent, or 4 million people worked regular overnights. Over half of them work in “protective services” and, depending on the year, about 41 percent work in food services. They tend to be men. They tend to be single. They tend to work alternate shifts because of “the nature of the job.” About one-fifth, however, chooses these shifts for “personal preferences.” Nationally, they tend to be black or African American, followed by Asian, Hispanic or Latino, and then white.

In New York City, according to 2005 American Community Survey (ACS) data from the US Bureau of the Census, 245,163 workers went to work between 4 p.m. and 4:59 a.m. That’s about 7 percent of the city’s 3.3 million workers. Reflecting national trends, more men worked these alternate shifts than women, especially shifts beginning after midnight. Since New York is a city of immigrants, and immigrants tend to be overrepresented in low-paying, low-prestige jobs, it is no surprise that many of those found working through the night were born on foreign soil.

NIGHTSHIFT NYC tells the stories of more than 100 of these workers. Men like Hassan, a young man from Yemen who works the Lucky Stop Deli in the Lower East Side from 8pm to 8am 7 nights a week. And women like Esther, a nurse on the nightshift in a Brooklyn pediatric ICU. But we also seek out the flavor of the city on the nightshift, not just for those working its dark hours, but for those night tourists from the dayshift as well. Alcohol makes a regular appearance on the nightshift, as does the comfort food that keeps diners and street vendors in business. At the end of a year on the nightshift conducting interviews for this book, we felt the effects of a life out of phase with the rest of the city. But more on that later...

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