San Francisco Fed: Part-Time Work Remains Extremely High

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Sep 3, 6:35AM EDT · Published Sep 2, 11:55AM EDT

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New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco about the stubborn presence of part-time workers in the U.S. economy:

Part-time work spiked during the recent recession and has stayed stubbornly high, raising concerns that elevated part-time employment represents a “new normal” in the labor market. However, recent movements and current levels of part-time work are largely within historical norms, despite increases for selected demographic groups, such as prime-age workers with a high-school degree or less. In that respect, the continued high incidence of part-time work likely reflects a slow labor market recovery and does not portend permanent changes in the proportion of part-time jobs.

And:

The share of employed individuals working part time rose from about 17% in 2007 just before the recession to nearly 20% in 2009 and stayed near that level through mid-2013. Some observers worry that this stubbornly high prevalence of part-time work may be one feature of an unfavorable “new normal” in the labor market. However, understanding the current high incidence of part-time employment and what it means for the labor market requires taking a longer view than the most recent business cycle. In this Economic Letter, we examine part-time employment since 1976 and earlier, the period for which detailed data on part-time workers are available. The incidence of part-time work is little changed relative to the recession of the early 1980s once changes in survey measurement are taken into account. Nonetheless, increases for various demographic groups underlie this overall stability, a trend that has accelerated because of a recession-induced shift towards involuntary part-time work. Still, the elevated level of involuntary part-time work is likely to fall as the labor market recovery continues.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.