Fact Service July 2011

Issue 29

Full-time jobs shortage leads to part-time work

The number of people working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment has hit its highest ever recorded figure of 1.25 million, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

The number of part-time workers in the three-months to May was 7.81 million — a record since the figures began to be collected in 1992. The number is up by 144,000 on the same period a year earlier, which covers the period just before the 2010 general election and the arrival of the coalition government.

The ONS also said that the number of people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job was 1.25 million — 181,000 more than a year ago, accounting for a record 16.1% of part-timers.

More records are broken in the gender breakdown with 697,000 or 12.0% of women working part-time doing so because they could not find a full-time job. The total number of part-time women workers was 5.83 million in the three-months ending May.

Meanwhile, the number of male part-timers totalled just under two million and of that total 557,000 or 28.1% were working part-time as they could not find a full-time post.

www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0711.pdf