The rise of part-time employment in the great recession: Its causes and macroeconomic effects

Hyunju Kang (), Jaevin Park and Hyunduk Suh

Journal of Macroeconomics, 2020, vol. 66, issue C

Abstract: During the Great Recession, the U.S. economy witnessed a substantial rise in part-time employment for a sustained period. We extend the New Keynesian unemployment model by Galí et al. (2012) to allow substitutions between full-time and part-time labor, and estimate the model’s parameters by using the Bayesian method. In our model, households and firms can optimally allocate full-time and part-time labor, and disturbances exist in part-time labor supply (household disutility from part-time labor) and part-time labor demand (firms’ efficiency to use part-time labor). As for the Great Recession, the initial increase in part-time employment at the outset of the financial crisis is mostly explained by the rise of the risk premia; the persistently high level of part-time employment in the later period is mainly explained by an exogenous increase in part-time labor supply. A part-time labor supply shock also explains a significant portion of slow recovery in the gross wage during the recession, as the shock lowers the part-time wage and the proportion of full-time workers in total employment. Notably, the results from our model suggest that though the transition from full-time to part-time jobs contributed to mitigating the sharp contraction in total employment and labor force during the Great Recession, it played only a limited role in relieving recessionary pressure.

Keywords: Part-time labor; Great recession; Unemployment; New keynesian model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E47 E52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:66:y:2020:i:c:s0164070420301828

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2020.103257

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