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Les effets de la mobilité temps complet - temps partiel sur la rémunération future

Les effets de la mobilité temps complet - temps partiel sur la rémunération future

Francine Mayer

Volume : 53-4 (1998)

Abstract

Effects of Full-Time to Part-Time Mobility on Future Wages

In 1997, part-time employment among people aged 25 years and older represented 15% of total employment, that is, 25% for women and 6% for men. Moreover, the rate of non-voluntary part-time work was 37%. Nine percent of all employed adult women worked part-time due to the economic situation or because they had not been able to find full-time employment, a significant rate of underemployment, compared with 3% for men.
 
In spite of moderate progress made from the mid-1980s to the mid1990s, part-time employment is still heavily concentrated in the least skilled occupations of sales, services and office work, and at the low end of the wage distribution (Schellenberg 1997). Given that it concerns a limited range of occupations, the OECD (1991: 23) maintains that “switching to part-time work therefore usually involves change of job and even occupation. Because non-standard forms of employment increasingly constitute a separate segment of the labour market, the possibilities for a parttime worker to transfer back to full-time stable employment are limited.” Full-time to part-time transitions can thus entail costs for workers in terms of human capital depreciation due to labour market segmentation or in terms of the signals sent out which translate into a negative effect on wages, even after the return to full-time employment. These costs will increase if switching to part-time work involves more than a simple reduction in hours of work and is accompanied by deskilling, that is, moving down the hierarchical occupational ladder.
 
This text examines the effects of full-time to part-time mobility, in particular whether or not this mobility entails “deskilling” (estimated on the basis of change in the hourly wage when the person becomes a part-time employee), on earnings in the most recent full-time job held during the period of observation. The study is based on the longitudinal file of Statistics Canada 1988-90 Labour Market Activity Survey. The sample includes, for the 1988-90 period, 803 cases of women workers aged 20-54 years, who were not students, who made at least one full-time to part-time (FT – PT) transition during the period of observation and who returned to full-time work before the end of 1990.
 
First, we developed a profile of workers based on whether or not there was deskilling as a result of switching to part-time work. In particular, younger women who held a job in the personal services sector before switching to part-time work (a sector with a low wage level and a high proportion of low-skilled jobs) and those who have a more disjointed career path on the labour market (higher number of weeks unemployed and more frequent job changes during the period of observation) are over-represented among workers who did not experience any deskilling. Furthermore, women who accumulated more full-time work experience before the beginning of the period of observation were over-represented among workers whose transition to part-time work resulted in a decrease in wages.

The deskilling effect of FT – PT transitions on the hourly wage when returning to full-time work was then estimated using Mincer’s semi-logarithmic equation. Results confirm the conclusions of American studies about the negative effect of job interruptions and episodes of part-time work on earnings in the most recent full-time job. However, they more specifically show that deskilling due to the FT – PT transition results in a 14.1% wage decrease in the most recent full-time job. Moreover, when the FT – PT transition and return to full-time work occur in the same occupation, that is, when there is no change in tasks or employer, switching to part-time work can be interpreted as a case of flexible working hours. The effect on wages in the most recent full-time job is thus positive (4.6%), compared to the reference situation where the return to full-time work involves a change of job, with or without a job change at the FT – PT transition. These results show the relevance of measures that facilitate mobility between forms of employment, that is, increased opportunities for reducing hours of work and more flexible planning of work schedules so as to reduce the risks of deskilling related to part-time work and its negative effects on future earnings.