Workers in Part-Time Limbo Point to U.S. Job-Market Slack
By Jeanna Smialek Oct 2, 2014 10:03 AM ET
The labor-market recovery that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen seeks is proving incomplete as many U.S. workers languish in part-time jobs.
Forty-nine percent of people working less than 35 hours a week in 2012 and desiring full-time work were able to find such a position within a year, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That’s down from 61 percent in 2006.
In addition, the almost 3 million Americans unemployed for at least 27 weeks are more likely to accept part-time jobs than counterparts out of work for shorter periods, according to a Chicago Fed paper. That means underemployment, a hallmark of the slow and uneven recovery from the recession, won’t quickly dissipate, backing policy makers such as New York Fed President William C. Dudley who counsel patience in removing stimulus.
“Slack is going to be gradually picked up, rather than just disappearing overnight and causing an upturn in wages,” said Emanuella Enenajor, an economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. “It buys the Fed time to keep policy accommodative.”
Eugene Grace, from Minneapolis, is among those struggling. He lost his full-time human-resources job at a medical devices company in 2006, stayed home at first to care for his five adopted children, then took temporary and part-time work to pay the bills.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-02/yellen-s-job-slack-sticks-as-workers-languish-in-part-time-limbo.html
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