Several big global companies are taking precautions against the new coronavirus, including encouraging their employees to work from home to mitigate any spread of the illness.
But not all jobs have that degree of flexibility.
Marissa Baker, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences department, told Business Insider that workers who may not have options to work from home, or who are paid hourly, will have to face tough decisions. "Do I stay home if I feel ill, or go into work so I can have a paycheck? What do I do if my child's school is closed, and I can't afford to stay off work?" she said.
Baker also noted that many jobs lack extensive paid sick leave, forcing tough decisions for workers deciding whether or not they should go to the hospital if they're feeling ill.
In a 2018 paper estimating disease and injury risks for the workforce of the Pacific Northwest, Baker and her colleagues included a measure of how much freedom workers have to make decisions as a proxy for the above considerations.
Many of the service sector jobs previously mentioned, like restaurant servers and fast food workers, as well as several other blue-collar occupations like non-airplane transportation attendants and textile workers, show up very low on O*NET's ranking of decision-making.
While it's not a perfect measure of workplace flexibility, workers in these types of occupations may be facing the types of risks that Baker noted, and might not have the resources or support from their employers needed in the face of an epidemic.