Updating the job numbers with the new numbers that are out today continues to show that virtually all the jobs created this year have been part time jobs.
So far this year there have been 848,000 new jobs. Of those, 813,000 are part time jobs (for both economic reasons and noneconomic reasons). As can be seen in the above screen shots from the BLS.gov, the total part-time jobs changed from 26.437 million in January to 27.250 million in August. To put it differently, an incredible 96% of the jobs added this year were part-time jobs. (It isn't clear to me why we see the differences in part time for economic and noneconomic reasons.) However, these numbers raise a question about whether the employer mandate that has already been forcing some companies to move to part-time workers so as to avoid government imposed penalties is having a significant impact. Might the relationship between the recent part time jobs and overall job growth be stronger as we were getting closer to what people thought would be the implementation of Obamacare's employer mandate? Might we now see a divergence with the very recent one year delay in the employer mandate? Or was the 2012 election the defining event for firms to begin to study the impact more? Data from the BLS.gov.
UPDATE 4: Using the sum of the part-time economic and noneconomic reasons. The relationship that appears to exist this year seems interesting.
Using the numbers from Table A6
UPDATE: The BLS.gov also provides a sum of these two numbers (available here) where they get a total of 532,000 (thanks to the "Department of Numbers" for pointing this out and to Nick for emailing me about their post). That implies that 63% of jobs added this year were part-time jobs, which is still an amazingly high number. Department Numbers uses this number Total Part Time Workers (LNS12600000) rather than the sum of the Part-Time for Economic Reasons (LNS12032194) and Usually Work Part Time Noneconomic Reasons (LNS12005977). At least part of what is going on has to do with the seasonal adjustment of the components produces a different result than seasonally adjusting the total. I can't see any reason that looking at the total makes more sense than looking at the sum of the two components. Indeed, a strong case could be made that it is better to seasonally adjust the components and not just the total. In any case, whether it is 63% or 96% or someplace in between, it is still a large portion of the increase in jobs that is due to part time employment.
Steve Bronars, a friend and a labor economist, argued that the most useful comparison might be to look at only Usually Work Part Time Noneconomic Reasons (LNS12005977). In that case, there was an increase in part-time workers of 875,000, but only an increase in jobs of 848,000. Thus, the increase in part-time jobs equals 103% of the increase in jobs from January to August.
UPDATE 2: Ben at the Department of Numbers now says that the percentage using Table A-6 is 59%, not 63%, but that is using a different time period. It is easy to verify the 63% using the "total part-time" number for the change from the beginning of the year (January through August) (63% = 532,000/848,000). 532,000 = 27,999-27,467. 848,000= 144,170-143,322. It seems pretty clear to me that the number to compare the 96% to is 63%, not 59%.
UPDATE 3: Tyler Cowan writes: "As Ben Engebreth points out, based on these BLS charts, the correct number seems to be 59% not 96%, though the higher estimate does still seem to hold in Lott’s (more cumbersome and less transparent) sources." But he provides no explanation for why this should be correct nor does it appear that he has checked the issues discussed in this post.
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