Part-time Work

This section gives an overview of the empirical evolution of part-time employment in those OECD countries in-cluded in the data set. First, I present data on how part-time has changed as a share of total employees, and then further break down how the proportions of part-time differ between various branches of the economy being at the heart of this study. Since the approach to the iden-tification of part-time work adopted by Eurostat is very different from the OECD’s and from statistical offices’

outside Europe, it is somewhat troublesome to compare shares of part-timers across many countries. Whereas the EU Labour Force Survey leaves it entirely to the re-spondents of the questionnaires to classify themselves, the statistical bureaus of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the OECD choose a clear cut-off point at 30 hours of work per week below which a job is consid-ered part-time. One possible way around this problem would be to solely rely on OECD sources, covering all countries in the data set, but unfortunately the OECD data do not provide information in sufficient detail down to the level of single economic sectors, leaving no other alternative than to draw on each country bu-reau’s data, even when these are not always directly com-parable. I begin with figures on Europe because these originate from a single, common source and hence are

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based on the same definition, before I subsequently add further data on non-European countries.

A first glance at the total proportion of part-time in Europe reveals that it has been growing over the past two decades and accounts for a significant fraction of all jobs (see table 2.1). In 2008, the frontrunner with the highest share was undoubtedly the Netherlands with 47% of total employment, all other countries trailing far behind. Switzerland, the country with the second highest rate, had a corresponding share of merely 34%, still higher than the rates of Sweden (27%), Germany (26%), and UK (25%). By contrast, Italy (14%), Fin-land (13%), Portugal, and Spain (both 12%) showed the lowest shares. Latter countries (with the exception of Finland), however, also saw the highest growth in part-time work between 1996 and 2008, no less than doubling their shares. Even the Netherlands with their

already very high rate further increased it by 15 per-centage points during the same time span. Only in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway did part-time employment stagnate, albeit on a high level. On average, there was an obvious, increasing trend towards part-time work whose fraction of total employment exceeded 25% in most European countries in 2008.

After this brief overview of part-time incidence in total employment, I will turn to single distinct branches of the economy and their respective part-time rates. I be-gin with manufacturing which is traditionally closely as-sociated with standard employment (for reasons I discuss in the latter part of this chapter) and therefore is expect-ed to rely least on part-timers. Indeexpect-ed, contrastexpect-ed with the economy in total, part-time rates in manufacturing are conspicuously lower (see table 2.2). The Netherlands

Table 2.1: Shares of Part-time Workers in Total Employment. Source: Eurostat

Table 2.2: Share of Part-time Workers in Manufacturing. Source: Eurostat, Data on Sweden from 2007

are once more the frontrunner and outlier with a share of 28%, followed by Switzerland with 16%. Even though there is a rising trend in most countries, part-time shares barely climb over a threshold of 10%, which is less than half as much as in the economy in total.

In stark contrast to these figures are the part-time shares in services. Starting with trade and repair, it is eye-catching that part-time rates were at least twice as high as in manufacturing and even up to four times larger (Finland and Portugal, see table 2.3). Compared to the share in total employment, in four countries (UK, Denmark, Germany, Norway) part-time fractions in trade and repair were more than 10 percentage points higher, whereas in only two countries (Switzerland, Por-tugal) part-time was less common. Also the long-term trend points to an upward direction: the proportion of part-time in trade and repair grew almost everywhere,

even when the same countries saw no increase of total part-time shares.

The same trend is even more pronounced in the data on hotels and restaurants (see table 2.4). The Netherlands, Denmark, UK, and Norway had part-time shares that at least came close and somepart-times even strongly exceeded the mark of 50%, thereby implying that part-time work may have become the rule rather than the exception already. Only Spain, Italy, France, Austria, Portugal, and Finland fell below a rate of 30%, which on average is still three times as much as in man-ufacturing. As could be seen in trade and repair, these figures do not appear to be the final climax of a pro-longed evolution unfolding over the past decades, but as an intermediate step on a continuous growth path that is set to continue.

When more sophisticated, high-skill services are

re-Table 2.3: Shares of Part-time Workers in Trade and Repair. Source: Eurostat. Data on Sweden from 2007

Table 2.4: Shares of Part-time Workers in Hotels and Restaurants. Source: Eurostat, Data on Sweden from 2007.

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garded, their part-time shares turn out to be highly de-pendent on whether these are largely supplied by private or public providers. In real estate and business, a service sector dominated by private firms, part-time was twice as common as in manufacturing with an increasing ten-dency, yet considerably less widespread than in hotels and restaurants (see table 2.5). By and large, the pattern of part-time employment in real estate and business ser-vices closely resembles that in trade and repair.

The sector of education and health, however, which is high-skill and, in contrary to real estate and business services, to a much higher degree part of the public do-main, is in its employment structure much more similar to hotels and restaurants, featuring the highest part-time rates of all sectors (see table 2.6). 70% of all Dutch

employees in education and health did their job on a part-time basis; in Germany, UK, and Switzerland the corresponding share amounts to some 40%. Only four countries–Italy, Spain, Finland, and Sweden–exhibit rates of less than 30%.

The trend of growing part-time employment, es-pecially in services, is further confirmed by data from outside Europe. As said before, the data from inside and outside Europe are not directly comparable because both the definition of part-time employment and the classification of business sectors differ; but even if a de-tailed comparison is impossible, the data nonetheless allow us to trace the same broad developments. In Can-ada, the fraction of part-timers in manufacturing stays roughly the same on a low level throughout the

peri-Table 2.5: Shares of Part-time Workers in Real Estate and Business Services. Source: Eurostat, Data on Sweden from 2007

Table 2.6: Shares of Part-time Workers in Education and Health. Source: Eurostat, Data on Sweden from 2007

od on which there is data (see table 2.7). Contrasting these figures with the proportion of part-timers in other sectors yields that in business and building services the corresponding share was four times larger, in education and health six times larger, in retail seven times larger, and in accommodation and food services even ten times larger. New Zealand’s figures roughly match Canada’s (see table 2.8). For Australia and Japan there are no de-tailed time series available, yet based on specific publica-tions of each country’s statistical agency, it is possible to derive some general conclusions from these countries.

In Australia, part-timers accounted for 20% of employ-ment in property services, 45% in health, 52% in retail, and 62% in accommodation and food services, where-as their share wwhere-as only 12% in manufacturing in 2008 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008). Japan is the only country to deviate slightly from that familiar pattern:

in 2007, the retail sector employed 24.6% part-timers, manufacturing 15.4%, while health care (14.6%) and other services (13.6%) surprisingly fell below the level of manufacturing (Asao 2011).

Summing up, services in general seem to be much more predisposed to part-time work than manufactur-ing throughout virtually all countries covered by this study. This holds particularly for hotels and restaurants as well as for social services, whereas the propensity to hire part-timers is slightly less pronounced in retail, re-pair, real estate, and business services. Moreover, most countries saw considerable increases in reduced hours work between 1996 and 2008, suggesting that part-time is increasingly becoming a regular and necessary form of employment, primarily in services. Manufac-turing, by contrast, remains largely unaffected by this trend.

Table 2.7: Shares of Part-time Workers in Canada. Source: Statistics Canada

Table 2.8: Shares of Part-time Workers in New Zealand. Source: Statistics New Zealand

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