Shadow
01-12-2012, 09:07 AM
Hooray! There are fewer of you working part time.
Boo! More of you are working multiple jobs.
The job market continues to be a mixed bag for millions of workers across the country.
On a positive note, when workers are able to clock in more than 35 hours a week after being forced to take fewer hours because of the tough economy, that’s good news for the economy and for employees.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the number of part-time workers in the United States working reduced hours because they couldn’t get full-time work or had their hours reduced by their employers, declined by 371,000 to 8.1 million in December.
It’s unclear, however, whether this latest government data (http://www.debatepolicy.com/#) on part-timers is a light at the end of the crummy labor market tunnel, or continued murkiness. The agency doesn’t track whether those individuals ended up with full-time gigs, or lost their part-time jobs.
“It could be that some people working part time involuntarily had their hours restored to fulltime (http://www.debatepolicy.com/#) or it could also be that they became unemployed,” said Jim Borbely, an economist for the BLS.
http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/12/10119448-few-part-timers-but-more-are-working-multiple-jobs
Boo! More of you are working multiple jobs.
The job market continues to be a mixed bag for millions of workers across the country.
On a positive note, when workers are able to clock in more than 35 hours a week after being forced to take fewer hours because of the tough economy, that’s good news for the economy and for employees.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the number of part-time workers in the United States working reduced hours because they couldn’t get full-time work or had their hours reduced by their employers, declined by 371,000 to 8.1 million in December.
It’s unclear, however, whether this latest government data (http://www.debatepolicy.com/#) on part-timers is a light at the end of the crummy labor market tunnel, or continued murkiness. The agency doesn’t track whether those individuals ended up with full-time gigs, or lost their part-time jobs.
“It could be that some people working part time involuntarily had their hours restored to fulltime (http://www.debatepolicy.com/#) or it could also be that they became unemployed,” said Jim Borbely, an economist for the BLS.
http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/12/10119448-few-part-timers-but-more-are-working-multiple-jobs