Part-Time Jobs Rise, Working Hours Decline, Data Reveals
Roy Maurer
The post-pandemic labor market recovery has been surprisingly strong, characterized by low unemployment and booming job creation, but a possible warning sign lies within the data—a decline in median hours worked and rise in part-time jobs, according to an analysis conducted by the ADP Research Institute.
In December 2019, part-time jobs accounted for 43 percent of all hourly jobs, but by December 2023, they accounted for 47 percent, ADP found. During the same period, the median number of hours worked by hourly workers fell from 38.4 to 37.7 a week, a decline of almost two percent.
The ADP Research Institute examined the payroll records of private-sector, hourly workers, tracking about 13 million individual jobs each month.
“We measured average weekly hours worked within a given month for each job, then calculated the median of those observations,” said Liv Wang, the lead data scientist with ADP who conducted the analysis. “The pandemic affected the labor market in ways small and large, including hours worked,” she said.
Julia Pollak, the chief economist at ZipRecruiter, said the relationship between hours worked and the health of the labor market is complicated, but the data could be signaling that the labor market is not as hot as other measures indicate and that layoffs and job loss may be around the corner.
“In the U.S., working hours tend to plummet during recessions, and tend to spike when demand for labor is very high,” Pollak said.
Between 2015 and 2019, the workweek for all private-sector nonfarm workers ranged from 34.3 to 34.6 hours, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In February, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up to 34.3 hours, at the bottom end of what’s considered healthy.
“Below that tends to signal layoffs,” Pollak said. “Above that is not great either, like during the pandemic reopening period when companies that were short-staffed were excessively relying on overtime.”
In this case, it’s difficult to figure out whether working hours are declining because of a rise in involuntary part-time work, or whether people are voluntarily working less because they want to, she added.
Pollak also noted that the labor market has cooled over the past year. “Employers are finding it easier to hire people and are not as reliant on squeezing as many hours as possible from a limited supply of workers,” she said.
Wang said possible reasons for the downward trend could be coming from both the employee and employer sides. “Employees may be asking for more flexibility, while rising wages have also enabled them to work less without reducing income,” she said. “Child care responsibilities may be impacting the workweek for female employees. The gig economy has also offered opportunities to work multiple jobs, which may mean less time on a single job.”
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CEO, REO Consulting, LLC
4moGreat article on how part-time positions could be a key in growing an organization and retention in top talent!