What’s All The Noise About Part-Time Employment?

 | Aug 11, 2013 03:32AM ET

Since the Jobs Report at the beginning of the month, pundits have been spewing over the inordinate employment gains of part-time workers – robbing the economy of the benefits of full-time employment.

Some blame it on the unintended consequences of Obamacare’s exception for part-time employees. Some blame it on a poor economy where employers do not want to commit to full-time employment. Pick your poison. It is not difficult to believe both factors are in play. But I pen this post believing another dynamic is also in play – a growing minority of the population only wants to work part-time.

First, it should be argued that part time employment is declining as the economy weakly grows – and the faster growth in part-time employment in the past few months (green circle in graph 1) is only noise.

Graph 1 – Ratio of Part-time Employment to Full-time Employment (seasonally adjusted)

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If you look at the movement of the ratio in Graph 1 since 2010 – it is hard to argue that dynamics have changed due to Obamacare or Click here to view the scorecard table below with active hyperlinks

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