Involuntary Part-time Employment Research Articles

Navigating the precarious path: Understanding the dualisation of the Italian labour market through the lens of involuntary part-time employment

This article investigates the surge in Involuntary Part-Time (IPT) employment in Italy from 2004 to 2019, exploring its impact on various socio-economic groups and adopting a spatial perspective. The study tests the hypothesis that technological shifts, specifically routine biased technological change (RBTC), and the expansion of household substitution services contribute to IPT growth. There is a widening negative gap in IPT prevalence among marginalized groups - women, young, and less skilled workers. After controlling for sector and occupation, the higher IPT propensity diminishes but remains significant, hinting at persistent discrimination. Additionally, segregation into more exposed occupations and sectors intensifies over time. Leveraging province-level indicators, and using a Partial Adjustment model, there is statistical support for RBTC’s correlation with IPT, especially among women. The impact of household substitution services is notably pronounced for women, highlighting sector segregation.

Unpaid overtime and non-standard employment among young people in Europe: do national context and institutions matter?

ABSTRACT This article presents a multilevel analysis of unpaid overtime among young people (aged 15–34) across EU-28 member states. It finds that non-standard employment and the specific characteristics and institutions of Europe’s labour markets are related to unpaid overtime. Use has been made of the European Union Labour Force Survey database for 2019. The econometric analysis shows that a national level and a greater scope of collective bargaining agreements, a higher rate of involuntary part-time employment and lower levels of unemployment expenditure increase the probability of unpaid overtime among young people. Furthermore, our results reveal that how flexibility is boosted in European countries drives unpaid overtime. Temporary employment, working from home and a higher number of hours worked are positively related to unpaid overtime, while part-time employment and temporary work agencies are negatively related. Finally, the older and higher educated young workers have a greater propensity towards unpaid overtime, while there is a negative effect of shift work and no significant one in terms of gender and the degree of protection against dismissal. Policy implications for the implementation of flexibility policies and working time regulations are also discussed.

Precarious employment and the workplace transmission of COVID-19: evidence from workers’ compensation claims in Ontario, Canada

ObjectiveTo examine the association between precarious employment and risk of work-related COVID-19 infection in Ontario, Canada.MethodsWe combined data from an administrative census of workers’ compensation claims with corresponding labour force...

Is precarious employment an occupational hazard? Evidence from Ontario, Canada

ObjectivesTo examine the association between precarious employment and risk of occupational injury or illness in Ontario, Canada.MethodsWe combined accepted lost-time compensation claims from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board with...

I Would Like to but I Cannot: What Influences the Involuntariness of Part-Time Employment in Italy

Over the last two decades, involuntary part-time (IPT) employment has become a more and more pressing issue in Europe, especially in the southern countries, where IPT today constitutes most part-time employment. Using INAPP-PLUS data and different discrete choice model estimations, this paper aims to shed light on the factors that explain the IPT growth in Italy, focusing on what influences the IPT status at the individual, household and labour market levels. The main hypothesis is that what influences the IPT work derive from a combination of workers’ individual, household, and job characteristics which may engender limited power during the bargaining process. The empirical results, based on gender-specific models, highlight that characteristics associated with the IPT status significantly changed over time, reporting a convergent path between the gender profiles of IPT employment. However, IPT employment for women still appears to be mainly originated from the gendered division of domestic and care tasks, while this phenomenon seems to be mainly driven by the labour demand side for men.

Testing hysteresis for the US and UK involuntary part-time employment

ABSTRACT In this paper, we test the persistence of involuntary part-time employment, making use of large historical series for the US and UK. We adopted a comprehensive macro-econometric approach, based on a battery of panel and time series unit root and stationarity tests, also allowing for flexible specifications as fractional integration and structural breaks in the series. For both countries, our results provide robust evidence on the existence of a long memory process and a structural break in the mean of the series in The Great Recession surroundings. Importantly, these findings suggest that relevant shocks affecting labour market outcomes (e.g. The Great Recession) are likely to have long-lasting structural effects on underemployment shares. Fortunately, this result also leaves room for designing effective labour market policies to counteract structural underemployment in the long-run. Finally, the micro-economic roots of this aggregate behaviour claim for further investigation.

Women’s Involuntary Part-Time Employment and Household Economic Security in Europe

The rate of involuntary part-time work among women has increased sharply. Scholars have demonstrated its links with diminished career opportunities, deteriorated working conditions, and low pay at an individual level. However, less attention has been paid to the effects of these contracts on economic security at the household level. This article investigates to what extent women being in part-time work involuntarily hinders their household’s ability to attain reasonable living standards and examines whether this would be any different if women were in part-time employment voluntarily. The results show that part-time work in itself does not necessarily constitute a threat to household economic security, but when it is involuntary, part-time employment jeopardizes a household’s financial well-being. This occurs in countries that deregulated peripheral corners of their labor markets, or “dualized” countries such as Italy, Spain, and France, and fully liberalized countries, such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom. HIGHLIGHTS Dualization refers to application of deregulation in peripheral corners of labor markets, increasing the precariousness of only certain categories of workers. In dualized and fully liberalized European countries, women’s involuntary part-time work threatens households’ economic security. It is the involuntary nature of part-time work, and not just reduced work hours, which lowers household economic security. Countries should implement forms of monetary support for low-work-intensity households.

Employment Precarization and Skilled Labour Migration in Western EU Countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between employment precariousness and high skilled migration. There exists a large number of studies investigating the effects of precarious employment on various issues ranging from unemployment to job insecurity, however, the studies on precariousness effects on migration are scarce. In addition, in scholarly literature, high skilled migration in developed economies is presented as a specific migration with patterns differing from those from low-income countries or among those with lower educational attainment. For these reasons, data from a relatively homogeneous sample of EU-15 or Western European countries that represent the highly developed European sub-region was selected. In the analysis, fixed-effects linear regression was applied. The model included part-time, involuntary part-time, temporary, involuntary temporary, short-term employment, unemployment and earnings as independent variables and the emigration of people with tertiary education as a dependent variable. The analysis showed that involuntary part-time and short-term employment are significant positive predictors of high skilled emigration. Meanwhile, unemployment and earnings did not predict high-skilled labour mobility in the sample of EU-15 countries. The results support the implication that labour precariousness may be related to increased emigration of those with higher education in developed economies.

Wishing for More: Technological Change, the Rise of Involuntary Part-Time Employment and the Role of Active Labour Market Policies

AbstractTechnological change has squeezed the demand for middle-skill jobs, which typically involve routine-intense tasks. This squeeze has coincided with an increase in the number of part-time working individuals who wish to work more hours. We argue that these two trends are linked. Due to the decline of middle-skill employment, medium-educated workers shift into low-skill employment, increasing the supply of labour for jobs in this segment of the labour market. This pushes those dependent on these jobs to accept part-time jobs, even if these involve fewer hours than they prefer. To empirically assess this claim, we analyse involuntary part-time employment across 16 European countries between 1999 and 2010. Our analysis confirms that a decline in middle-skill employment is associated with an increase in involuntary part-time employment at the bottom end of the labour market. This finding implies that the automation of routine-intense labour worsens employment possibilities in this segment of the labour market. However, we show that training and job creation schemes mitigate this effect. These programmes cushion competition either by providing medium-educated workers with the necessary skills to shift into high-skill jobs or by increasing employment possibilities. Thus, governments have the tools to support workers facing challenges in the knowledge economy.

Working time flexibility in the EU countries

The study aims to identify the EU’s trends in the use of flexible forms of working time and to determine the specifics of individual EU countries. The study monitors the flexibility of working time based on the following indicators: persons employed part-time (as a percentage of the total employment); involuntary part-time employment as % of total part-time employment; the share of employed persons by the flexibility to decide on working time by a country; the share of employed persons who can easily take one or two days off at a short notice by working at home. The paper uses descriptive statistics, analysis of the development of time series using the growth rate, sigma convergence, and weighted sum approach. All analyzed indicators were taken into account to express one value, based on which it is possible to compare countries. Thus, the study expressed the overall benefit using the weighted sum method. The maximum value of the total benefit expressed using all the indicators among the EU countries was reached by the Netherlands. One of the reasons may be the short period of parental leave and the large share of women working part-time for a long time. The second reason is the large share of young people working part-time. On the contrary, Bulgaria, where women spend a relatively long time with their children after birth and then start full-time employment, ranked the last. This should be justified by the fact that flexible forms of work are mainly used by women and their prevalence is largely dependent on the length of maternity and parental leave. AcknowledgmentThis paper is created within the project funded by the Scientific Agency of Slovak Ministry of Education VEGA reg. no. 1/0689/20 “Digital economy and changes in the education system to reflect labour market demands”.

Cyclical and structural determinants of involuntary part-time employment in Turkey

ABSTRACT We examine the correlates of involuntary part-time employment in Turkey. We contribute to previous studies regarding Turkey on two aspects. First, we focus on the cyclical and structural components that capture both labour demand and supply conditions, respectively. Second, we control for sample selection bias by applying a recursive bivariate model. We find that involuntary part-time employment is more common among males and moves with unemployment rate. Estimation results present a strong association between involuntary part-time employment and structural factors.

A Cross-sectional Study of Sustainable Employment in Nordic Eldercare

This study addresses the retention challenges of Nordic eldercare by investigating how care workers’ work-time arrangements are associated with consideration to quit the job. Particular attention is paid to the mediating role of economic distress and work-life conflict. Based on a Nordic cross-sectional survey (Nordcare II), we investigate how different modes of shift work scheduling and involuntary part-time employment are directly and indirectly associated with consideration to quit the job. Parallel analyses from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden reveal that work-time arrangements are indirectly associated with consideration to quit the job in all countries. Perceived work-life conflict increases with the number of different shifts included in a shift schedule. Danish care workers, who more often work fixed shifts, report the lowest level of work-life conflict. Involuntary part-time employment, which is most widespread in Norway, is directly associated with financial distress in all countries, but with work-life conflict in Norway only.

The Impact of Employment Quality and Housing Quality on Human Development in the European Union

This study aims to contribute new information on how and through which factors employment quality and housing quality can be improved from a human development approach so that people can live the life they want. Using the human capabilities approach as a theoretical reference framework, the article analyses the effect of involuntary part-time employment and overcrowded housing on the Human Development Index (HDI). The empirical analysis is based on the panel data technique, which is applied to data from the European Statistical Office (Eurostat) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the 28 member countries of the European Union. The results shed new evidence on how involuntary part-time work and overcrowded housing limit or hinder people from living the lives they want, at least in the dimensions measured by the HDI.

The ins and outs of involuntary part-time employment

We develop and implement a protocol to measure U.S. monthly time series of involuntary part-time employment stocks and flows from 1976 until today. Armed with these new data, we provide a comprehensive account of the cyclical dynamics of involuntary part-time work. We find that the recessionary increase in involuntary part-time employment is consistently driven by a jump in the transition probability from other employment states to involuntary part-time employment, and a drop in the reverse transition probability. We compare the dynamics of unemployment and involuntary part-time employment to argue that they reflect the operation of distinct labor-adjustment channels. While unemployment dynamics are driven by movements in job creation and destruction, the dynamics of involuntary part-time employment reflect changes in employers’ labor utilization.

Sometimes Your Best Just Ain’t Good Enough: The Worldwide Evidence on Subjective Well-being Efficiency

Abstract Most of the studies on subjective well-being focus on the determinants of absolute life satisfaction or happiness levels. This paper asks an important but understudied question, namely, could countries achieve the same or even higher subjective well-being by using the same resources more efficiently? We provide the first country panel evidence on whether nations efficiently transform their endowments (income, education, and health) into subjective well-being and which factors influence the conversion efficiency. Using data on 91 countries from 2009 to 2014, we find that that well-being efficiency gains are possible worldwide. We show that poor labor market conditions as proxied by unemployment and involuntary part-time employment are associated with lower ‘subjective well-being efficiency,’ while social support, freedom, and the rule of law improve it. These findings are useful to policymakers in helping identify inefficiencies, reducing wasteful resource use, and developing policies that promote sustainable development and human well-being. Our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks and raise policy-relevant questions about the appropriate instruments to improve subjective well-being efficiency.

Labour market outcomes of different institutional regimes: evidence from the OECD countries

AbstractThe rise of populism has been widely ascribed, at least in part, to an inability of national systems to generate decent employment or, indeed, stem its decline. This article explores the basis and nature of variations in labour market outcomes of different institutional regimes. For this comparative institutional analysis, we build indexes of labour market outcomes in the OECD countries, measuring actual cross-country variations and encompassing a much wider range of evidence in terms of countries and time periods covered than previous studies. We show that in terms of job availability and wages, the liberal market economies (LMEs) have advantages, but once involuntary part-time employment and wage inequality are considered, labour market outcomes appear superior in the continental European countries and the Scandinavia social democracies. However, any advantages of the LMEs appear to be diminishing since the global financial crisis. Compared with other regimes, Southern European and transitional economies have lower level of job availability and wage rates but are comparable in other aspects of the labour market.

Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Part-Time Employment

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires employers with at least 50 full-time-equivalent employees to offer “affordable” health insurance to employees working 30 or more hours per week. If employers do not comply with the mandate, they may face substantial financial penalties. Employers can potentially circumvent the mandate by reducing weekly hours below the 30-hour threshold or by using other nonstandard employment arrangements (direct-hire temporaries, agency temporaries, small contractors, and independent contractors). We examine the effects of the ACA on short-hours, part-time employment. Using monthly CPS data, we estimate that the ACA resulted in an increase in low-hours, involuntary part-time employment of a half-million to a million workers in retail, accommodations, and food services, the sectors in which employers are most likely to reduce hours if they choose to circumvent the mandate, and also the sectors in which low-wage workers are most likely to be affected. Our empirical strategy uses as a control group Hawaii, which has had a more stringent employer health insurance mandate than that of the ACA for several decades. The findings are robust to placebo tests and alternative specifications. JEL Classification Codes: I13, J23, J3

Distributional Implications of Labor Market Reforms

Spain’s structural reforms, implemented around 2012, have arguably contributed to a faster and stronger economic recovery. In particular, there is strong evidence that the 2012 labor market reforms increased wage flexibility, which helped the Spanish economy to regain competitiveness and create jobs. But the impact of these labor reforms on income inequality and social inclusion has not been analyzed much. This paper aims to shed light on this issue by employing an econometric decomposition procedure combined with the synthetic control method. The results indicate that the 2012 labor reforms have helped improve employment and income equality outcomes with no substantial impact on the overall risk of poverty. Nevertheless, the reforms appear to have induced a deterioration of average hours worked, in-work poverty, and possibly also of involuntary part-time employment.

Distributional Implications of Labor Market Reforms: Learning from Spain's Experience

Spain's structural reforms, implemented around 2012, have arguably contributed to a faster and stronger economic recovery. In particular, there is strong evidence that the 2012 labor market reforms increased wage flexibility, which helped the Spanish economy to regain competitiveness and create jobs. But the impact of these labor reforms on income inequality and social inclusion has not been analyzed much. This paper aims to shed light on this issue by employing an econometric decomposition procedure combined with the synthetic control method. The results indicate that the 2012 labor reforms have helped improve employment and income equality outcomes with no substantial impact on the overall risk of poverty. Nevertheless, the reforms appear to have induced a deterioration of average hours worked, in-work poverty, and possibly also of involuntary part-time employment.

Individual and household in-work poverty in Europe: understanding the role of labor market characteristics

ABSTRACTThe article presents an analysis of the association between labor market characteristics related to female employment and the prevalence of in-work poverty. We compare two relative measures of in-work poverty: The individual definition refers to workers whose salary is below 60% of the median, while the household-level definition refers to individuals whose household income is below 60% of the median. Microdata from the 2014 EU-SILC survey and macrodata on involuntary part-time employment and female labor market participation are used to perform a multilevel analysis on 31 European countries. The results show a positive relationship between involuntary part-time work and in-work poverty according to the household definition. Female labor market participation is positively associated with the individual definition and negatively with the household one. However, after controlling for the level of within-country income inequality, only the effect of the female employment rate remains positive and significant for the individual in-work. These results shed light on the multifaceted role of labor market characteristics related to female employment and their implications for policy. We argue that the promotion of female participation should be combined with explicit measures to reduce the disadvantageous position of women in the labor market.