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Abstract
Part-time employment growth in the United States and Canada followed similar trends between 1955 and 1975, which then diverged when part-time employment (as a percent of total employment) stopped growing in the United States but continued to expand in Canada. This divergence in trend in the latter part of the twentieth century is not adequately explained by labor supply demographics, labor demand factors, or union effects. To the contrary, differences in public policy played a pivotal role in allowing Canadian workers to continue to view the choice of shorter hours as attractive, while US workers faced higher costs when choosing part-time employment.
Acknowledgements
The author expresses appreciation for the comments received on earlier versions prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the Business History Conference and of the Illinois Economic Association. The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments of her colleagues at DePaul University, especially John Berdell and Jin Man Lee, as well as the two anonymous referees of this journal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The Pew Research Center reported survey results from its Social and Demographic Trends Project under the title, “From 1997 to 2007: Fewer Mothers Prefer Full-time Work.” In 1997, 48% of working mothers with children under 18 years of age identified part-time work as the “ideal situation,” compared with 32% identifying full-time work and 20% identifying not working as ideal. By 2007, the numbers had shifted dramatically, with 60% of working mothers seeing part-time work as ideal compared to 21% seeing full-time work as ideal. Those identifying “not working” as ideal remained essentially unchanged at 19%. (Pew Research Center, “From 1997 to 2007,” 1).
2. Actual number working part time from U.S. Department of Labor, CPS.
3. Jacobs and Gerson, “Who are the Overworked Americans?” 89. Jacobs and Gerson analyze data from Bond, Galinsky and Swanberg, The 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce.
4. Hunnicutt, “The End of Shorter Hours,” 373.
5. See Whaples, “Hours of Work” for a detailed bibliography.
6. Bosch, Dawkings and Michon, Times are Changing; Huberman and Minns. “The Times They Are Not.”
7. Owen, “Work-time reduction.”
8. Bluestone and Rose, “The Enigma of Working Time Trends,” 27.
9. Average annual hours worked in the U.S. actually increased slightly (32%) between 1979 and 2000, whereas hours fell dramatically in Western Europe (489% in Germany, 244% in France, 107% in the United Kingdom) and recorded a more modest decline (of 31%) in Canada. Mishel, Bernstein and Boushey, The State of Working America, 425.
10. Lehndorff, “Working Time Reduction,” 53.
11. Golden, “The Effect of Working Time,” 9. This review also documents the mismatches between workers’ actual and desired work schedules.
12. Fagan, “Gender and Working Time,” 131.
13. McCann, “Regulating Working Time,” 17. The Netherlands was a leader in this movement, passing key pieces of legislation in 1996 and 2000, which gave part-time workers “a legal right to equal treatment” and the “legal right to change from full-time to part-time hours or the reverse.” Messenger, “Working Time at the Enterprise,” 183.
14. Hunnicutt, “The End of Shorter Hours,” 374, 388.
15. Duffy and Pupo, Part-time Paradox; Erhenberg, Rosenberg and Li, “Part-time Employment.”
16. Duffy and Pupo, Part-time Paradox, 98.
17. Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible” Table 5, 158.
18. Blank, “Are Part-time Jobs,” 129; Marshall, “Part-time by Choice,” 25; Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible,” 159; and Bardasi and Gornick, “Working for Less?” 17.
19. Blank, “Are Part-time Jobs”; Marshall, “Part-time by Choice.” Data available from both countries for the period 1997–2000 show that the average hourly earnings of part-time workers were 55.5% of those of full-time workers in the US, whereas part-time workers in Canada had hourly earnings that were 67.4% of their full-time counterparts. Average weekly earnings of part-time workers relative to full-time workers were roughly equivalent in the US (29.1%) and Canada (30.3%) between 1997 and 2000 because US part-time workers have higher average hours. The difference in the two countries’ part-time/full-time wage ratios was present in the early 1980s. In separate analyses, Simpson (“Analysis of Part-time Pay” 805) and Ehrenberg et al. (“Part-time Employment” 264) found that, even after adjusting for worker and job characteristics, part-time workers earned 10% less in Canada (in 1981) and 18% less in the US (in 1984) than their full-time counterparts. Hirsch (“Why Do Part-time Workers”) found a similar part-time/full-time wage gap for US workers but estimated that worker characteristics (particularly the more limited work experience of part-time employees) accounted for most of the gap.
20. Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible,” 157.
21. Bardasi and Gornick, “Working for Less?”
22. Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible,” 159.
23. Marshall, “Part-time by Choice;” Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible,” 158.
24. Duffy and Pupo, Part-time Paradox, 48; Marshall, “Part-time by Choice,” 22; Blau and Kahn, “Labor Supply;” Kalleberg, Reskin and Hudson, “Bad Jobs in America.”
25. Erhenberg et al., “Part-time Employment;” Pupo and Duffy, “Canadian Part-time Work;” Tilly, “Reasons for the Continuing.”
26. Ehrenberg et al.’s (“Part-time Employment” 258) estimation of the annual trend in involuntary part-time, for several time periods ending in 1984, suggests an accelerating rate of growth. However, 1984 was a peak year for involuntary part-time employment (roughly a third of total part-time) and the estimated growth rates may have been significantly less were the analysis extended to 2000 when involuntary part-time employment stood at less than 15% of total part-time work (www.bls.gov: Series LNU02032197 and LNV02032200). Ehrenberg et al. acknowledge the sensitivity of the growth rates to the choice of starting point (footnote 7) but were constrained by data availability to end their analysis in 1984.
27. Schreft and Singh, “A Closer Look;” Statistics Canada, “Canada-U.S. Labour Market;” Blank, “Are Part-time Jobs,” 125; and Marshall, “Part-time by Choice,” 25.
28. Pupo and Duffy, “Canadian Part-time Work,” 83; Statistics Canada, “Canada-U.S. Labour Market,” 11.
29. Kalleberg et al., “Bad Jobs in America,” 273; quote from Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible,” 167; Part-time Work in Canada 69.
30. Averages for 1975 by major SIC code were 34.5 h per week in PLS (pressers/laundries), 27.5 in AFS (hotels and restaurants), 38.6 in manufacturing, 39 in construction, and 40 in mining. Statistics Canada, CANSIM, Table 281-0022 (“Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours”).
31. While the percent of Canadians working 30–34 h per week increased from 3.7 to 6.6% of total employment, those working less than 30 h per week also increased. Workers in the 1–14 h category increased from 5 to 5.8% and those working 15–29 h increased from 7.5 to 12.3% of total employment (Table ).
32. U.S. Department of Labor, CPS. Stratton’s (“Are ‘Involuntary’ Part-time”) analysis of data from the 1990 Current Population Survey verifies the accuracy of this method of measuring the involuntary nature of part-time status.
33. The measures of involuntary part-time employment are based on each country’s definition of part-time. For the US, these measures come from questions directed at workers with less than 35 h per week, while for Canada, the measures are from surveys of workers with less than 30 h per week. (See Appendices 1 and 2 for data sources.) The following analysis examines data only to 1995 because the Canadian reasons for part-time work categories were changed in 1997, and the new data series on involuntary part-time employment is not comparable to the previous data.
34. U.S. Department of Labor, “Involuntary Part-time Work,” 1.
35. The percent seeking part-time work is likely to be lower in Canada since it does not include those seeking work of 30–34 h per week who are considered, by the Canadian definition, to be looking for full-time work.
36. Marshall, “Part-time by Choice.”
37. Again, the measures of voluntary part-time employment are based on each country’s definition of part-time. [See Appendix under Involuntary Part-time Rate for sources.].
38. Golden and Appelbaum, “What was Driving.”
39. Declines in the percent of married women in the labor force even as their participation rates increased indicates that the percent married in the female population was declining. This decline was due to increases in the divorce rate and decreases in marriage rates, which were particularly pronounced in the 1970s. (Greenwood and Guner, “Marriage and Divorce.”).
40. The percentage of young workers was higher in Canada throughout this period, though some of this difference is likely the result of the different data gathering procedures, as the Canadian data are for 15–24-year-olds, while US data are for 16–24-year-olds.
41. Card and Riddell, “A Comparative Analysis.” This classification difference may be tied to the structure of the Unemployment Insurance systems in the two countries. A more detailed discussion of these two systems is included in Public Policy section below.
42. McKie, “Part-time Work,” 35. Bosch (“Working Time Reductions,” 188) documents the different positions that unions have taken, noting that US unions have generally fought against the expansion of part-time employment, whereas Dutch trade unions have welcomed the growth of part-time jobs and have sought to protect part-time workers.
43. Tilly, “Dualism in Part-time Employment,” 331.
44. Health Canada, “History of Federal Transfers.”
45. Kaiser Commission, Health Insurance Coverage; Herz, Meisenheimer and Weinstein, “Health and Retirement Benefits.”
46. Women’s Health Policy, second paragraph.
47. duRivage, New Policies for the Part-time, 95.
48. Olson, “Health Benefits Coverage,” 55.
49. Between 1999 and 2004, employee contributions toward family policies increased 56.3% (from an average of $168.68–$263.65 per month) compared to a 40.2% increase in contributions toward premiums for single coverage (U.S. Department of Labor, National Compensation Survey, 1999, 2004).
50. Olson, “A Comparison of Parametric,” 543.
51. Roberge, “Unemployment Insurance in Canada;” Price, “Unemployment Insurance.”
52. Blank and Hanratty, “Responding to Need;” U.S. Social Security Administration, “Annual Statistical Supplement.”
53. Card and Riddell, “A Comparative Analysis,” 185.
54. U.S. Department of Labor, National Compensation Survey; Annual Vacations with Pay; and International Labour Office, “Part-time Work,” 69, 129.
55. Card and Freeman, “Small Differences that Matter,” 190.
56. A growth rate is used because the percent unionized in the US is almost perfectly (negatively) correlated with the female employment ratio, generating potential multicollinearity problems with the estimation. Multicollinearity does not generate biased estimates but can result in low t statistics due to inflated standard errors. Correlation between other independent variables was checked and did not reveal additional issues with multicollinearity.
57. The fixed and random cross-section effects estimation of the data was conducted using STATA14. Data and Do files available from the author.
58. See Gruber and Madrian (“Health Insurance, Labor Supply”) for a review of this literature and Gruber and Madrian (“Health Insurance and Job Mobility,” 86) for one use of the term “job lock.”
59. A recent Congressional Budget Office update on the labor market effects of the Act “estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5–2.0% during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor.” (U.S. Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic,” Appendix C 117]) Some of this reduced labor supply may come in the form of workers switching from full-time to part-time employment.