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THE story is repeated often: U.S. companies keep costs low by using part-time workers, who are cheap to hire and easy to fire. Labor leaders and their friends in the media cite the UPS strike as proof. Bob Herbert, writing in the New York Times, calls the strike a symbol of a new economy where “the managerial elite has treated itself to breathtaking riches,” full-time jobs have “decay[ed] into temporary or part-time employment,” and “job security has given way to permanent employment anxiety.”

Critics like Herbert and Robert Kuttner (who charges that “part-time and temp work is the fastest growing sector of the great American job machine”) are wrong. Despite minor ups and downs there has been no consistent change in part-time employment since the early 1980s. In 1996, 18.3 per cent of U.S. workers worked less than 35 hours a week. That’s down from 18.9 per cent in 1994 and about the same as 1983’s 18.4 per cent.

ER

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Ed Rubenstein

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THE story is repeated often: U.S. companies keep costs low by using part-time workers, who are cheap to hire and easy to fire. Labor leaders and their friends in the media cite the UPS strike as proof. Bob Herbert, writing in the New York Times, calls the strike a symbol of a new economy where “the managerial elite has treated itself to breathtaking riches,” full-time jobs have “decay[ed] into temporary or part-time employment,” and “job security has given way to permanent employment anxiety.”

Critics like Herbert and Robert Kuttner (who charges that “part-time and temp work is the fastest growing sector of the great American job machine”) are wrong. Despite minor ups and downs there has been no consistent change in part-time employment since the early 1980s. In 1996, 18.3 per cent of U.S. workers worked less than 35 hours a week. That’s down from 18.9 per cent in 1994 and about the same as 1983’s 18.4 per cent.