New Policies for the Part-time and Contingent Workforce

Virginia L. DuRivage

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315485317
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

While much attention has been focused on the rise of the modern Chinese nation, little or none has been directed at the emergence of "citizenry". This book examines thinkers from the period 1890-1920 in modern China, and shows how China might forge a modern society with a political citizenry.

Chapter 1
Short Hours, Short Shrift: The Causes and Consequences of Part-Time Employment

Chris Tilly

Introduction¹

In 1989 nearly twenty million Americans, or one-fifth of the labor force, were employed part-time.

Part-time employment makes up a growing share of jobs in the United States. In 1989 nearly twenty million Americans, or one-fifth of the labor force, were employed parttime. At first glance, this trend might appear to be a benign one: aren't employers simply accommodating the wishes of housewives, students, retirees, and others who prefer shorthour schedules? In actuality, the growth of part-time employment is a danger signal for the U.S. economy. Most part-time jobs are low-wage and low-skill—part of the flood of such jobs that has swept the United States since the early 1970s. Part-time employment has expanded since 1970, not because more workers want these jobs, but because more employers realize the short-term cost-cutting advantages inherent in utilizing part-time work. In fact, involuntary part-time workers-—part-time workers who would prefer full-time hours—account for almost all of the growth in the part-time share of total U.S. employment since 1970. Ironically, at the same time, a small but significant fraction of full-time workers would prefer to work part-time, but are prevented from doing so by employers' unwillingness to grant them schedule flexibility.

Expanding part-time employment is a growing economic problem among working families in America. More family members are working, but the large number of people working part-time jobs earn lower wages and few or no benefits. Involuntary part-time work persists as a form of hidden unemployment, even when the official unemployment rate falls. And growing part-time employment feeds greater income inequality between low-wage and high-wage workers and their families.

Even for the employers who have promoted it, part-time work is at best a mixed blessing. Service industry employers have used part-time employment to cut their most visible costs: wages and benefits. But, at the same time, they have undermined productivity by moving toward a workforce that is characterized by high turnover, low skill, and minimal job commitment. To some extent, wages and productivity have followed each other in a downward spiral. To shore up American productivity and provide relief for U.S. families, new policies toward part-time work are needed.

The number of part-timers as a percentage of the total U.S. labor force increased from 13 percent in 1957 to more than 18 percent in 1989.

The Part-Time Boom

Part-time workers comprise almost one-fifth of the U.S. workforce. About twenty million people in the nonagricultural workforce worked part-time in 1989,² making up 18.1 percent of persons at work. A full 92 percent of these parttimers reported that they usually worked part-time. Almost a quarter of the part-time workers—4.7 million people— were involuntary part-time workers who would have preferred a full-time job.³ These figures represent averages for people working more than twelve months; about twice as many people worked part-time at some time during the year. Since the late 1950s, the number of part-timers as a percentage of the total U.S. labor force increased from 13 percent in 1957 to more than 18 percent in 1989. In the short term, the rate of part-time employment has climbed during economic recessions and dipped during expansions (see Figure 1). But over the long run, increases have exceeded declines, so that on average, the fraction of the workforce employed part-time has grown an estimated 0.19 percentage points per year since the 1950s, rising more rapidly during the 1970s and continuing its growth in the 1980s.

The expansion of part-time employment would appear even more startling if U.S. statistics counted the number of part-time jobs rather than the number of persons whose total hours worked fall below the full-time threshold.⁴ Multiple jobholders—86 percent of whom work twenty-four hours or less on their second jobs—climbed from 4.9 percent of the workforce in 1979 to a record high of 6,2 percent in 1989, marking an increase in part-time jobs without a corresponding increase in official part-time employment figures (Stinson, 1986; U.S. Department of Labor, 1989b).

FIGURE 1
Part-time as Percent of Those at Work (Involuntary, Voluntary, Total, 1957-89) Note: Nonagricultural workers only. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, various dates.

Part-time workers are disproportionately women, teenagers, and persons of retirement age.

Until 1970 the growth in part-time work was driven by expanding voluntary part-time employment, as women and young people desiring part-time hours streamed into the workforce. But since that time, the rate of voluntary parttime employment has stagnated, and the expanding rate of involuntary part-time work has propelled more recent growth, accounting for two-thirds of the growth of parttime work between 1969 and 1988. In today's economy, companies are creating part-time jobs even though workers do not want them.

Who Works Part-Time and Where?

Part-time workers are disproportionately women, teenagers, and persons of retirement age (see Table 1). Compared to 18 percent of all workers, 27 percent of women work part-time, making women 1.5 times as likely to be

TABLE 1
Rate of Part-Time Employment tor Various Nonagricultural Workforce Groups, 1988

	Percent of Persons in Group at Work Part-Time:
Total Workforce group	Involuntary	Voluntary	Part-Time
Men	3.9%	7.5%	11.4%
Currently married men	2.6	3.6	6.1
Single (never-married or no longer married) men	6.3	14.3	20.7
Women	5.6	21.2	26.8
Currently married women	4.8	22.6	27.4
Single (never-married or no longer married) women	6.5	19.4	26.0
Age
Age 16-19	10.5	53.7	64.3
Age 20-64	4.3	10.1	14.3
Age 65 and up	4.5	47.2	51.7
Black	7.2	9.8	17.0
Black men	6.5	6.7	13.2
Black women	7.9	12.8	20.7
White	4.4	14.2	18.5
White men	3.7	7.5	11.1
White women	5.3	22.5	27.7
All	4.7	13.7	18.4

Note: To interpret Table 1, compare the rate of part-time employment in a given group with the rate in the workforce as a whole (bottom row).

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, January 1989.

employed part-time as the average workforce member. The teen part-time employment rate is 3-5 times the labor force average while persons aged 65 and over work part-time at 2.8 times the average rate. These probabilities are shaped primarily by the incidence of voluntary part-time employment. Not surprisingly, these three groups in the workforce are those who are most willing to accept lower wages and benefits in order to obtain a satisfactory work schedule.

The rates of involuntary part-time employment tell a somewhat different story Women, teens, and black workers—all of whom already face discrimination in wages and employment—are the groups hardest hit by involuntary part-time employment. While women are more likely to choose part-time work, they are also more likely to be stuck in part-time jobs against their will. The female rate of involuntary part-time work is 44 percent greater than that for men.

While women are more likely to choose part-time work, they are also more likely to be stuck in part-time jobs against their will.

Black workers, while only two-thirds as likely to hold voluntary part-time jobs as whites, are 1.7 times as likely to work part-time involuntarily. Teens are more than twice as likely to work part-time involuntarily as the average, reflecting their weak standing in the labor market, but workers 65 and over have a rate of involuntary part-time employment below the average.

Part-time rates range from 17.5 percent in the South to 20.9 percent in the Midwest. Regional differences, though small, nevertheless reflect the composite effects of disparities in voluntary and involuntary part-time employment. The Northeast, with its relatively tight labor market, has a low rate of involuntary part-time employment—3 percent, compared to more than 5 percent in all other regions. The South and West have low rates of voluntary part-time employment, due both to below-average female labor force participation rates and to low rates of part-time employment among women.

Varieties of Part-Time Work

The categories of voluntary and involuntary part-time work are inadequate to explain why, where, and how parttime employment is used. Instead, part-time work can be broken down into three broad categories: short-time, secondary part-time jobs, and retention part-time jobs. In the goods-producing industries such as manufacturing, construction, and mining, where male workers predominate, short-time is a common form of part-time employment. Instead of laying workers off during a downturn, an employer temporarily reduces workers' hours. When sales revive, the employer typically restores full-time hours. Short-time employment enables employers to keep their workers during slow periods and offers employees an alternative to layoffs. However, short-time is rarely preferred to full-time employment. More than half of part-time employment in the goods producing industries, including shorttime, is involuntary, compared to about one-quarter in the economy as a whole.

Short-time employment, while important in particular industries, comprises less than one-tenth of part-time employment overall. Nearly nine in ten part-time jobs are in the service industries, and in these sectors secondary and retention part-time employment are most important.

Secondary part-time jobs are marked by low skill, low pay, few fringe benefits, low productivity, and high turnover. Managers who adopt these work schedules cite low compensation and scheduling flexibility as their key advantages. Secondary part-time employment thus represents one form of what labor economists call a secondary labor market—a set of jobs characterized by high turnover and little opportunity for advancement.

Secondary part-time jobs are marked by low skill, low pay, few fringe benefits, low productivity, and high turnover.

Retention part-time jobs, on the other hand, are work schedules created to retain (or, in some cases, attract) valued employees whose life circumstances prevent them from working full-time; for example, women with young children. Retention part-time work arrangements tend to be offered only to workers in relatively skilled jobs. Unlike secondary part-time employment, retention part-time work is characterized by high compensation, high productivity, and low turnover—all features of what labor economists call a primary labor market. In these jobs, managers accommodate worker preferences as compared to secondary part-time employment where workers seldom have a choice.⁵

Evidence suggests that secondary part-time employment is the more common type of part-time work. Almost two--thi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Structural Change and the Growth of Part-Time and Temporary Employment
• Chapter 1. Short Hours, Short Shrift: The Causes and Consequences of Part-Time Employment
• Chapter 2. Temporary Employment in the Eighties
• Chapter 3. New Policies for the Part-Time and Contingent Workforce
• Bibliography
• Index