1 in 5 part-time workers want more hours

The latest statistics showed there are 821,000 part-time workers who preferred and were available to work more hours. Additionally, about half of the underemployed part-time workers preferred to work full-time hours (47.5 per cent).

And most of those part-time underemployed workers wanted just another 10 hours of work while 44.4 per cent had spent a year or more working in a job with insufficient hours.  

The number of underemployed part-time workers has actually fallen 189,000 from 1,010,000 in February 2021 (which was 24.9 per cent of all part-time workers). That decline was broken down into men, which fell by 95,000 from 421,000 to 326,000 (32.1 per cent to 25.8 per cent) and women which fell by 94,000 from 589,000 to 494,000 (21.4 per cent to 17.6 per cent).

In February 2022, about half of the underemployed part-time workers preferred to work full-time hours (47.5 per cent or 389,700 underemployed part-time workers). The other half preferred to work more hours but remain working part-time (52.5 per cent, or 431,200 underemployed part-time workers). Of that it was men aged 25-44 years who were most likely to prefer to work full-time (73.3 per cent), while women aged 65 years and over were least likely to prefer to work full-time (8.1 per cent).

In February 2022, 364,200 underemployed part-time workers spent a year or more working in a job with insufficient hours (44.4 per cent of all underemployed part-time workers). Half of all underemployed part-time workers worked with insufficient hours for 39 weeks or less (median duration of insufficient hours).

Additionally, of the 821,000 underemployed part-time workers, just under half (44.6 per cent) took active steps to look for additional hours. The top three steps taken to look for more hours were:

• Wrote, phoned or applied in person to an employer (30.0 per cent)
• Answered an ad for a job on the internet, in a newspaper, etc (26.9 per cent)
• Asked current employer for more work (25.5 per cent)

For underemployed part-time workers who looked for work or more hours in February 2022, the top five difficulties in finding more work were:

• “Other” difficulties (most likely related to difficulties associated with the pandemic) – 14.5 per cent
• Too many applicants for available jobs – 12.1 per cent (down from 19.6 per cent in February 2021)
• No vacancies in line of work – 10.3 per cent
• Insufficient work experience – 7.7 per cent
• Lacked necessary skills or education – 7.4 per cent

If a suitable job had been offered, 14.4 per cent were prepared to move interstate, and 17.9 per cent were prepared to move within their state or territory.

Just over half of underemployed part-time workers (53.6 per cent) preferred not to change employers in order to work more hours.

Employed people can be underemployed either because:

• They worked less than their usual hours for economic reasons (due to being stood down, or there was insufficient or no work available – hours reduced (sometimes referred to as the “Cyclical underemployed”)
• They would prefer (and are available) to work more hours than they usually work – prefers more hours (sometimes referred to as the “Structural underemployed”)

Of the 13.6 million employed people in May 2022, 1,470,500 were underemployed. Of these:

• 305,100 people had their hours reduced – 115,100 were employed full-time and 190,100 employed part-time
• 1,273,600 people preferred more hours – 538,100 were employed full-time and 735,500 employed part-time
• There were 108,200 people who were in both categories – they had their hours reduced to less than usual and also preferred to work more than usual hours.

In May 2022, there were a total of 16.9 million hours not worked. Of these 14.1 million hours were not worked by people who preferred more hours, and 2.9 million hours were not worked by people who had their hours reduced.