Part-time jobs lapping full-time offers
Part-time employment has surged in recent months, highlighting both the tentative nature of a long, slow economic recovery and the changing dynamics of work.
Through July, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, the number of people working part time in the United States grew 4 ½ times as fast as the number of fulltime workers. And the share of all workers who mainly hold part-time jobs is at levels not seen since the early 1980s.
Several reasons account for this trend, economists say: technological change, shifting demographics, economic unease, the onset of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Some workers are happily part-timing it, for a little extra money in semiretirement or in school. Others work part time because the only alternative is no work at all.
In August, the Labor Department says, there were 7.9 million Americans working part time involuntarily, almost twice as many as were in 2006. Four-plus years since the recession technically ended, those numbers haven’t changed much, and people who watch the labor market say they have no idea when they will.
“This is a really peculiar incident,” said David Wiczer, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “[The share of part-time workers] always comes up in the aftermath of a recession, but it usually starts to fall again. This time it hasn’t fallen.”
As the economy cratered in late 2008 and early 2009, the share of workers who are only employed part time, which the government defines as 35 hours a week or less, shot up, hitting 20 percent in January 2010. Since then it has ticked down a bit to 19.6 percent in July.
This was over a period in which the economy has added nearly 6 million jobs. From January through July, the number of working Americans grew by 960,000, according to Labor Department surveys. The number of those who have full-time jobs was up 172,000. The ranks of parttime workers? Up 766,000.
Many of the industries with the fastest job growth this year are ones that tend to hire a lot of part-timers. And lately, some of those workers have been pushing for a better deal.
In August, fast-food workers walked off the job as part of nationwide protests. While higher wages are the centerpiece of their campaign, many workers walking the picket lines complain about inconsistent and unpredictable hours, too.
Others, though, are parttimers by choice. They like the money, but also the flexibility that can come with a shorter schedule. Older workers, in particular, are staying in the workforce longer, just not in a 40-hour-a-week role — and their large numbers are helping to add to the parttime roles, Wiczer said.
“There’s this demographic bulge right now that’s moving towards more part-time employment,” he said. “In 10 years, that’s not going to be the case.”
Many of the jobs that have been slower to grow back since the recession are ones that traditionally offered a 40-hour week at average wages: manufacturing, construction, clerical office work. If technology and globalization mean those sorts of jobs never return to the United States, it’s not clear what will replace them. This is not a new thing, Wiczer said.
“Really, since the 1970s a lot of job growth has been either in low-end occupations or high-end occupations,” he said. “And lower-end occupations often have more parttime work.”
But some economists say hiring part-time employees won’t make much difference in the long run.
In a recent paper, two researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco estimated that the Affordable Care Act might boost the ranks of part-time workers by 1 or 2 percentage points; federal regulations have long encouraged employers to skirt health-care costs through part-time hiring, wrote Rob Valletta and Leila Bengali.
“The ultimate effect [is] likely to be small,” they wrote.
The economists suggest a much bigger factor in whether people can find full-time work is the overall strength of the economic recovery. And once that starts to feel more full time, the jobs it’s creating will, too.