PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT IS KEY TO ECONOMIC RECOVERY

If you want to know when the economy might recover, pay attention to part-time employment figures. Since the fall of 2007, the number of employees forced to work part-time due to the economic slowdown has doubled to over nine million people – that’s two million more than at any time in 54 years of collecting the data. You can see the spike in the chart.

You can also see a close correlation between the start of a recession and a sharp shift to using part-time workers. And, conversely, that when an economy recovers, the use of part-time workers falls off quickly. From what you see on the chart, it doesn’t look like we are even close to an economic recovery.