A report released Wednesday by the Iowa City-based Iowa Policy Project finds more people are working nonstandard  jobs – part time, contract, on-call or temporary, which is steadily eroding the number of workers covered by health insurance and leading to job instability.

The nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project hired Princeton Survey Research International, which surveyed 1,303 adults between the ages of 18 and 64, living in the continental United States. The results indicate that the rate of nonstandard workers rose sharply from 27 percent of the nation’s work force in 2005 to 40 percent of the work force in 2009.

Conversely, the percentage of standard workers — those employed full time and expecting to continue working in their present job — has declined from 73 percent to 60 percent during the same four-year period. That has affected overall health insurance coverage because employers typically offer health insurance coverage to full-time workers, while those working part time, contract, on-call or temporary positions are not offered employer-sponsored coverage.

“Employer-provided health insurance has become more rare and more expensive, leaving the economically weakest workers to fend for themselves,” said Noga O’Connor, an Iowa Policy Project research associate and co-author of the report “Fending for Themselves,” which was funded by a $335,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.

“Our analysis revealed that workers with no health insurance are 10 times more likely to experience job loss and job change compared to insured workers,” O’Connor said. “We discovered that the demographic variables of age, education, gender and income are significantly related to health insurance and worker status.

“Older, better-educated and better-earning individuals are significantly more likely to be insured and to be standard (full-time) workers. We also found a significant race effect when comparing Black, Hispanic and white workers.

“Hispanic workers are significantly less likely to be insured and to be standard workers. This last finding is most alarming, as it may suggest a discriminatory labor market, in which Hispanics are employed in inferior jobs that do not carry the same benefits as other jobs do.”

Andrew Cannon, another  Iowa Policy Project research associate who co-authored the 60-page report with O’Connor, said many part-time workers are involuntarily underemployed because of the economic recession and fewer full-time jobs. Cannon said that has affected overall job stability, reliability and work force productivity.

Cannon said the changes brought about by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to reduce the number of uninsured workers are a positive step, but they will not take effect until 2014. He said economic recovery could lead to regaining some of the ground workers lost in terms of job-based insurance rates and long-term employment.

O’Connor said the study also found that many of the respondents who claimed to have health insurance coverage actually had a discount medical card. The latter, sold by many providers in a basically unregulated market, offer discounts at selected health care providers, but are not considered insurance policies.

“We found that 9 percent of the employed respondents had a medical discount card, but 4 percent responded to our survey questions in a way that made us understand that they believe they have medical insurance coverage.”

O’Connor and Cannon said the medical discount cards require a patient to pay considerably more for medical services than the traditional insurance co-payment of $10, $15 or $20. More importantly, the mistaken belief that they have medical insurance calls into question the responses received by such government agencies as the Census Bureau, which do not clarify the nature of the coverage.

“The distinction between real and perceived coverage is important because it indicates other measures, including the Current Population Survey, may overstate the rate of insurance coverage, and this may affect public policy choices,” the report concludes.

David Osterberg, Iowa Policy Project founder and executive director, said the report should prompt federal policymakers to take a hard look at the growing percentage of the work force employed in nonstandard jobs and the impact on everything from employee productivity to work force stability.

“Somebody ought to be looking at this and they’ve stopped looking,” Osterberg said. “We’re pushing the federal government to collect the data on nonstandard jobs and maybe they will find a different number than we did.”