The Govt Labor Dept. definitions of full & part-time employment are bizarre, to say the least.
Below is the recurrent foot note on the subject from the BLS:
- "Employed persons are classified as full- or part-time workers based on their usual weekly hours at all jobs regardless of the number of hours they are at work during the reference week. Persons absent from work also are classified according to their usual status. Full time is 35 hours or more per week; part time is less than 35 hours."
The Govt considers workers Part-Time only if they "usually" work Part-Time.
In contrast if they're usually working Full-Time, but are currently working less than 35 hours/week,
they're
still considered Full-Time and are listed as Full-Time in Govt statistics.
The Govt hair-splitting on this subject is insane.
It gives a separate total for persons working 35 or more hours/week.
And it gives a total for those working less than 35 hours/wk.
But then it starts subdividing those categories into those who "usually" work <35 hrs/week,
and those that "usually" work >35 hrs/week.
Those working <35 hours/week, but usually work Full-Time, are listed as Full-Time.
And they are added to the Full-Time employment total.
As a result, this distinction needs to be noted when comparing Labor Dept stats.
For November 2014, the total Household Employment number was
147.287 million.
But only 104.044 million of that number were working 35 hours or more per week.
12.857 million so-called "usually" Full-Time workers were working only 1-34 hours/week.
But even worse, 2.541 million "usually" Full-Time workers weren't working at all!
And, yes, they were also added to the total number of "Full-Time" workers,
--for a total of 119.44 million.
In reality, as per the previous post, the number of Americans working >35 hours/week fell 1.8 million
between June & November 2014.
The entire increase in Employment since June has been due to an increase in workers working <35 hours/week--what most of us would consider 'part-time'.