Why Do Part-Time Workers Earn Less? The Role of Worker and Job Skills

By B. Hirsch. Social Science Research Network, 2005

271 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Part-time workers receive considerably lower hourly earnings than do full-time workers. Using Current Population Survey earnings files for September 1995 through December 2002, the author finds that measurable worker and job characteristics, including occupational skill requirements, account for much of the part-time penalty. Longitudinal analysis of the data indicates that much of the remaining gap reflects worker heterogeneity, evidenced by small wage gains and losses among workers switching between part-time and full-time jobs. The lower skills of part-time than full-time workers result primarily from limited work experience and accumulation of human capital. Little evidence can be found of a large wage gap between part-time and full-time women. A part-time wage penalty is found for men, but men account for less than one-third of total part-time employment.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Public Administration

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cfd9ce9c2288f80e91c05359d0f0c8c57c69761d

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Citations in the corpus

Job Satisfaction and Family Happiness: The Part-Time Work Puzzle (2008, unknown): “While the UK government has gone some way to improve childcare access and quality, its initiatives are still of only a marginal nature.(23)”
The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations (2017, methodology): “Because part-time workers have lower hourly earnings than full-time workers (Blank 1990; Hirsch 2005), the higher incidence of 44 Hersch (2013) found that the presence of children reduced labor-market activity more for married women from elite colleges than for married women from less selective…”
The Part-Time Wage Penalty in European Countries: How Large is it for Men? (2007, unknown): “…as the Netherlands (Russo and Hassink, 2005) – as a European example – but also Australia (Booth and Wood, 2004; Rodgers 2004) and the US (Ferber and Waldfogel, 1998; Hirsch, 2005). mean that a firm's total labour costs do not increase proportionally with hours worked (Montgomery, 1988; Oi, 1962).”
Family and career path characteristics as predictors of women’s objective and subjective career success: Integrating traditional and protean career explanations (2008, background): “People who work part-time accumulate less experience and have lower skills, which makes them less valuable to organizations (Hirsch, 2005).”
Working Time Mismatch and Subjective Well-being (2009, unknown): “Hirsch (2005), for example, used micro-data from the US Current Population Survey and found that after controlling for measurable characteristics, and especially occupational skill requirements, much of the part-time wage differential disappeared.”
The wage penalty induced by part-time work: the case of Belgium (2005, methodology): “The results for Belgium do not differ strongly from the ones obtained in Jepsen (2001a). Despite the fact that the estimation corrects for the fact that productive women seem to be selected into full-time employment, the wage gap continues to be entirely caused by differences in observed characteris”