Half A Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market

Notes

NOTES CHAPTER 1 1. In this book, two definitions of part-time employment are used. Throughout discussions of economic theory and the interview data, the term is used to refer to jobs that in the short run usually involve fewer than the standard number of hours per week considered full-time by a given employer. This job-centered definition is chosen because the book primarily examines why and to what extent employers use part-time work. Thirty-five hours turns out to work well as a general cutoff point, although each company has its own definition of full-time work. Part-time employment is taken to include involuntary part-time positions and temporary reductions in hours, since both situations involve a firm's decision to create a part-time job-if only temporarily. In addition to jobs that fall below the hours cutoff, jobs that involve full-time hours but are classified as part-time are considered to be part-time. For example, a grocery store manager reported that about 15 percent of his part-time employees were working 40 hours a week in order to deal with a severe labor shortage. Yet they are still classified as part-time since they have not been promoted to fulltime positions and therefore receive lower hourly pay, fewer benefits, and a smaller number of guaranteed hours than full-timers. It seems appropriate to view these workers as part-time. Virtually all statistical results cited in the book draw on household data that use a second, person-based definition of part-time employment: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) definition of persons working "part-time schedules" as those working less than 35 hours a week, except for the usually full-time workers who are working part-time for noneconomic reasons (including a legal or religious holiday, vacation, temporary illness, bad weather, industrial dispute, or a job for which regular full-time hours are less than 35 hours per week). In particular , all results based on the BLS's Current Population Surveyor Employment and Earnings use this person-based definition. Copyrighted Material 199 200 Notes to Chapter 1 Until 1994, the BLS classified part-timers as voluntary or involuntary according to how they answer the question, "Why are you working less than 35 hours a week?" Persons reporting the reason as slack work, material shortages or repairs, a job that started or ended during the survey week, or inability to find full-time work were considered involuntary, or "part-time for economic reasons "; all others were considered voluntary. In 1994, the BLS also began to count as voluntary anyone who said he or she did not want, or was not available for full-time work (these questions were not asked in earlier years). Of course, the BLS counts as involuntary part-time workers only those who would prefer a full-time job in their present circumstances. For example, a woman who can only work part-time because she is unable to find day care is a voluntary part-timer by this criterion. Presser and Baldwin (1980), who surveyed mothers with children under five, discovered that one-quarter of those employed part-time felt they were blocked from working more hours by the unavailability of day care. On the other hand, because the BLS definition does not ask part-time workers whether they would prefer a full-time job at the same rate of pay and benefits , many involuntary part-time workers are presumably expressing a desire for greater hourly compensation as well as for more hours. In my interviews, involuntary part-time employment and involuntary fulltime employment were gauged by asking whether part-time workers would prefer having full-time jobs and asking whether full-time workers would prefer having part-time jobs. This concept is somewhat different from the BLS definition. However, it is simple and readily understood by the managers and workers interviewed . 2. Note that involuntary part-time employment may be understated because it includes only workers who are unable to work full-time for narrowly economic reasons and not, for example, people unable to find care for their dependents . 3. The rate of involuntary part-time employment is given here as a proportion of those at work, rather than those employed, because persons employed but temporarily away from work are excluded from the total of involuntary part-time workers according to BLS definitions. 4. U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, January 1994. Throughout the book...