Last fall our article Are We Becoming a Part-Time Nation covered the trends leading to the growing number of part-time workers in the U.S.
The recent New York Times article The Rise of Part-Time Work covers some of the same ground. Key quote:
"Compared with December 2007, when the recession officially began, there are 5.8 million fewer Americans working full time. In that same period, there has been an increase of 2.8 million working part time."
Driving the growth of part-time work are part-timers that would prefer to working full time. The BLS call this group part-time for economic reasons. They are part-time because they can't find a full time job or because of slack business conditions.
As the chart below from the NY Times shows, their numbers have grown 3.4 million since the beginning of the recession.
February's job report continues this trend. While the overall report was quite good (at least by comparison to those of the last few years), a big chunk of the increase was in part-time work.
As we pointed out in our prior article on this topic, a number of trends are driving the increase of part-time work. Expect to see more part-timers in the coming years.
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