Unpaid labour and precarity: The ‘hidden subsidy’ to production

This article theorises the structural interdependence of unpaid labour and precarious employment through the concept of the ‘hidden subsidy’ to production. Drawing on labour process and feminist theories, we conceptualise unpaid labour as necessary labour performed without remuneration, including activities required to sustain occupational participation or perform paid work beyond formal employment. We argue that precarious employment facilitates the displacement and normalisation of such labour, whose temporal, material and relational costs may be absorbed through individual, household and social-reproductive resources. These resources thereby function as a ‘hidden subsidy’ to production, sustaining employment without entering employers’ calculations of labour costs. Drawing on 65 interviews with ballet dance and residential care workers, we identify two configurations: occupational investment , through which dancers bear present costs to sustain uncertain future employment, and occupational obligation , through which care workers extend their labour to compensate for organisational shortages. We show how unequal capacities to absorb these costs connect production and social reproduction.