More People Pushed Into Part-Time Work Force

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

More People Pushed Into Part-Time Work Force
By KRIS MAHER
March 8, 2008; Page A1

As the softening economy begins to push more people into part-time jobs in place of full-time work, the part-time world is getting tougher. Take Linda Barry of Pittsburgh, a 57-year-old gas-station cashier who typically works 40 hours a week. Her employer classifies her as part-time and gives her no health benefits because she won't work night shifts; she uses that time for a second job cleaning offices five hours a night. "I have part-time status with full-time hours," she says.

For many, the nature of part-time work is changing. More and more people are working part-time jobs for economic reasons, rather than by choice. That figure rose by 100,000 in February for the second month in a row, the Labor Department reported yesterday, bringing it to 4.79 million -- compared to 4.13 million a year ago, and the highest since 1993. More people also are holding multiple part-time jobs out of economic need. In 2007, an average of 1.8 million people held two jobs for that reason, the highest since the government began regularly tracking the statistic in 1994. The growth was largely fueled by women, who overtook men to make up the majority of the multiple-job market for the first time, according to a labor bureau study.

A big factor is the fast-growing retail sector, which has felt more pressure to use part-timers since many supermarket and big-box chains started staying open for extended hours in the 1980s and 1990s. The stores' most recent wrinkle is the adoption of computerized scheduling systems, which try to boost service and trim costs by matching staff size to customer traffic, hour by hour. Growth of part-time staff in the sector has been slightly outpacing that of full-time staff since 2000, according to Labor Department figures.

(snip)

Part-time jobs typically pay 10% to 20% less per hour than comparable full-time work. Often they offer no health or retirement benefits and little job security, though some "part-timers" work 60 hours a week, or more. Those working two part-time jobs are taxed twice for unemployment insurance. Ms. Barry, the part-time cashier and office cleaner, altogether works as many as 65 hours a week, finishing work each weeknight at 11 p.m. The nighttime cleaning job pays $8.50 an hour, about a dollar more than her daytime job at the Get Go gas station, owned by privately held supermarket chain Giant Eagle Inc. The night job is more consistent, too, because her shifts as a cashier change each week. There's no guarantee that if she quit her night job she would earn full-time status in her day job and gain benefits, she believes. Even then, she'd lose more than a third of her current weekly income.

(snip)

Giant Eagle says that many employees, especially senior citizens and students, like the flexible scheduling offered by part-time positions. Employers say the systems improve service because they are far better at forecasting labor demand than a store manager relying on last year's sales figures. The systems can factor the effects of store promotions, sporting events, graduations and even the weather to determine the right staffing for different hours and days.

(snip)

But Kroger and others have been negotiating with their unions to increase the hours to be filled by part-timers, says Marc Levinson, an economist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. who follows the grocery industry. He cited a 2004 contract between Kroger and the United Food and Commercial Workers that lowered the maximum percentage of hours staffed by full-time workers in covered Cincinnati stores to half, down from 55%. Union and company officials said it was done so the company could pay benefits to fewer people. Ms. Glynn said the company agreed to "a very high quality" health-care plan for full-time workers and needed to use more part-time workers to staff its busiest hours.

(snip)



URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120180029637632435.html (subscription)