Is Part-time the New Normal?

With continued sluggish unemployment reports, are we becoming a nation of part-time workers? A recent report from the U.S. Census of Agriculture revealed that more than half – 52 percent – of American farmers only work part time. The majority of our 2.1 million farmers responsible for day-to-day farm operations do not list farming as their principal occupation.

[CLICK HERE to read the highlight report, “2012 Census of Agriculture,” at the United States Department of Agriculture, Feb. 2014.]

Another recent news item highlights the “part-timing” of our university professors. In the last decade, while the cost of college tuition has risen exponentially, some campuses have been cutting back on professor pay and benefits by adding more part-time adjunct professors. Adjunct means professors are hired on an as-needed basis, depending on class enrollment from one semester to the next. In other words, they don’t work full-time, don’t receive benefits, and don’t even know if they’ll have that same job in five months. Among our nation’s college instructors, more than three-quarters – 76 percent – teach part time.

And that’s just the perspective of professors. Representing the viewpoint of students, one co-ed recently tweeted: “Why are ‘part time’ professors even a thing? It’s so inconvenient when you need help & you can’t even see your instructor for office hours.”

According to a report by the Delta Cost Project, while universities, on average, have reduced their full-time teaching staff in recent years, they’ve increased the number of school administrators.

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “Part-time Professors Demand Higher Pay: Will Colleges Listen?” at NPR.org, Feb. 3, 2014.]

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive?” at Delta Cost Project, Feb. 2014.]

The opinions on whether working from home is more of a slack-off part-time job versus a highly productive one, is also a subject of great debate. Recent findings from a study in China, published by The Harvard Business Review, revealed that customer call center workers assigned to work from home completed almost an extra workday a week. Not only that, the company conducting the study also found that at-home workers were happier and less likely to quit.

One of the study’s researchers observed that:

“At home, people don’t experience what we call the “cake in the break room” effect. Offices are actually incredibly distracting places … people at home worked more hours. They started earlier, took shorter breaks, and worked until the end of the day. They had no commute. They didn’t run errands at lunch. Sick days for employees working from home plummeted.”

[CLICK HERE to read the article, “To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home,” at The Harvard Business Review, Jan.-Feb. 2014.]

As far as the American workweek goes, some would prefer we move more towards the European standard of less work and more time to play. Among other industrialized nations, here’s a quick look at some of the more flexible gems: