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The big flaw here is the assumption that pay scales directly with hours worked. It doesn't and generally shouldn't. To start with some data, https://www.bls.gov

The big flaw here is the assumption that pay scales directly with hours worked. It doesn't and generally shouldn't. To start with some data, https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/a-comparison-of-hourly-wage-rates-for-fulland-part-time-workers-by-occupation-2007.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/a-comparison-of-hourly-wage... states that out of 324 occupations analyzed, 182 showed statistically significant lower hourly wages while only 12 showed an increase. It appears that doesn't include the loss of benefits, which makes the difference even starker. So why do part-time jobs consistently pay less then full-time? Part of it may be the type of worker- employers hire less skilled/able workers into part-time rolls and then convert to full-time if they are good, or part time workers are concentrated in groups that have historically and currently experienced wage discrimination (women are massively overrepresented in part-time work). However, the explanation I find most viable is simple that part-time workers take longer (calendar time) to do everything. If it takes 500 hours of work to get competent at a job, then a FT worker doing 40s will be operating at competency in about 3 months, while a PT employee at 20 hours a week will take 6 months. But it gets worse- every project or task will take longer, and we know the longer things take (calendar time) the more likely they are to be irrelevant when finished. The lead times and slower skilling introduced by working less hours have a real impact on business. That's not to say doing PT work or having PT workers can't be valuable. They won't even always be paid less- Workers that are already highly skilled (such as PT consultants) can command higher hourly rates (because they only work in highly skilled specialized environments). But generally speaking, we shouldn't expect pay to increase or decrease linearly with hours worked.

jerojero 4y ago
Yes, you're absolutely right. There's definitely a cost associated to part time workers. But that doesn't mean the current 40 or so hours a week (in Australia it's 37.5) is the optimal amount of hours that a worker is productive. If the worker is actually working 20 to 25 of those hours and the rest is made up work then you're not really getting things done any faster. So I think your analysis rests on the assumption that every hour of those full time hours is actually a productive hour. I think anyone that has worked can probably vouch for the contrary. But I reckon there's a kind of "the emperor is naked and everyone can tell but says nothing" situation, where we want to pretend we are all much more efficient and productive than we actually are. Part of it probably comes from the need that everything needs to be sort of standardised otherwise it'll be too much overhead for management. So it's a very difficult problem, but I think smaller firms (20 to 100 people) should probably experiment much more. And they kind of are with 4 day weeks and so on.

jerojero 4y ago

Yes, you're absolutely right. There's definitely a cost associated to part time workers. But that doesn't mean the current 40 or so hours a week (in Australia it's 37.5) is the optimal amount of hours that a worker is productive. If the worker is actually working 20 to 25 of those hours and the rest is made up work then you're not really getting things done any faster. So I think your analysis rests on the assumption that every hour of those full time hours is actually a productive hour. I think anyone that has worked can probably vouch for the contrary. But I reckon there's a kind of "the emperor is naked and everyone can tell but says nothing" situation, where we want to pretend we are all much more efficient and productive than we actually are. Part of it probably comes from the need that everything needs to be sort of standardised otherwise it'll be too much overhead for management. So it's a very difficult problem, but I think smaller firms (20 to 100 people) should probably experiment much more. And they kind of are with 4 day weeks and so on.