Jan 9, 2012
Since 2009 the job market has been more than unsettling. People with college degrees have been forced to work in retail positions or only part-time. Even people with years and years of experience have been looking for jobs that will not only help them to pay the bills, but keep them on a schedule for more than twenty hours a week. The idea of employees working part-time when they really need a full-time job is called underemployment and it has been just as prominent as unemployment in these past few years.
There is good news on the underemployment front though. In December the amount of people clocking in for a full week’s worth of work bumped up to 113.8 million people. That was the most since February of 2009. The lowest of amount of people since January 2009 who need full time work, worked part time in December. Only 8.1 million people who need full time jobs worked part time.
This shift from part time to full time work is just another piece to the recovering job market puzzle. In turn many suspect that these changes will lead to more household confidence and more spending.
Businesses are also benefiting from the part-to-full time increases. When your employees are full time, there is better production because of the permanency. Employees are more willing to put in more into their jobs if they are sure of the fact that it is more permanent.
Who knows if this shift will continue on the current path, but if it does so it might mean brighter days ahead for the financial front. More people with full time work will spend more and put more back into the economy, hopefully giving that boost we all really need in the right direction out of the red. We will just have to wait and see.
