Part-timers: Living on Half-rations

A short schedule often means inferior compensation for America's 19 million part-time workers (a figure that excludes about 300,000 agricultural workers). The occasional ad for a part-time senior executive notwithstanding, the vast majority of part-timers hold the same types of positions they always have heldlow-wage, dead-end jobs that offer few, if any, benefits or promotional opportunities. Managerial, professional, and technical positions, which account for about 31 percent of full-time jobs, make up only 17 percent of part-time jobs. Nearly 78 percent of part-time jobs, but only 55 percent of full-time jobs, are in sales, clerical, service, and unskilled labor occupations. Part-time employment has grown at a much faster rate than full-time employment during the past two decades, and now accounts for one of every five persons at work in the United States (see Figure 1 on page 10). A combination of social and economic factors un-