Part-time employment of married women in the U.S.A.: a cross-sectional analysis

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 1996  by Bijou Yang Lester

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In summary, the regression results indicate that (1) the percent of service sector in the gross state product does not shed any light on the part-time employment of married women, and (2) the female labor force participation rate is a significant factor, along with the percent of blacks in the state population, in explaining the variation in the part-time employment of married women across the continental states.

IV

Conclusions and Directions for Future Research

The time-series analysis of Golden and Applebaum (1992) and research of (Tilly, 1992) among others implied that the female labor force participation rate was not a factor contributing to the rising phenomenon of either temporary employment or part-time employment. These two studies were cited because both types of work are types of contingent employment which has risen rapidly since 1970, and, explosively, during the 1980s. Golden's and Applebaum's study attributed the growth to the demand side factor, while Tilly's to the transition of the economy from manufacturing to service and the adoption of human management strategies with the heavy utilization of part-timers rather than full-timers. This paper attempts to challenge the dismissed role of female labor force participation rate and the important role of the service sector in the phenomenon of part-time employment across the 48 continental states.

The 1980 census data were chosen because some of the variables used in the factor analyses in choosing the representative variables were not available for 1990. We used cross-sectional data deliberately because it so often happens that time-series analyses and cross-sectional studies end up with different conclusions. It turns out that the percent of part-time employment of married women across the states was strongly and positively associated with the female labor force participation rate and negatively with the percent of blacks. It was suggested that African American workers might be considered a competitive substitute for the part-timers who were predominantly women. The percent service sector in the gross state product did not shed any light on the part-time employment of married women - the regression coefficient is relatively low (0.01 as opposed to 0.49 for FLFP and 0.23 for BLK) and most importantly the significance level is extremely low.

In summary, this empirical study shows that the female labor force participation is an important factor behind the part-time employment of married women across the 48 continental states in 1980, most likely because the predominant providers of this type of labor services are women. This conclusion refuted one of the conclusions of a time-series analysis by Golden and Applebaum (1992) and a study by Tilly (1992). The present study also found no support for Tilly's emphasis on the sectoral shift from the manufacturing to the service industries.

For a research agenda in the future, it would be useful to see if the same conclusion holds for 1990. Since Tilly's study addressed the issue of part-time employment, unlike the Golden and Applebaum's on temporary employment, it might be useful to find a proxy variable to capture the change in human management strategies of using part-time workers more extensively among all industries as Tilly suggested.