A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Shift-Surviving in a Changing Economy

Shannon Hardin earns $10.90 an hour at her part-time job. 

“I can’t live on this,” she said. “It’s almost impossible.”

-Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times-

The widening use of part-timers has been a bane to many workers, pushing many into poverty and forcing some onto food stamps and Medicaid. And with work schedules that change week to week,
workers can find it hard to arrange child care,
attend college or hold a second job,
according to interviews with more than 40 part-time workers.

In in two leading industries — retailing and hospitality — the number of part-timers who would prefer to work full-time has jumped to 3.1 million, or two-and-a-half times the 2006 level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In retailing alone, nearly 30 percent of part-timers want full-time jobs, up from 10.6 percent in 2006.
The agency found that in the retail and wholesale sector, which includes hundreds of thousands of small stores that rely heavily on full-time workers, about 3 in 10 employees work part-time.

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