The First Part-TIME Economy in the World
Does it Work?
These marginal jobs are especially the domain of young people; one in four employed youth
aged between 16 and 24 has a marginal part-time job. This is strongly related to the
explosion of secondary jobs taken up by students, which in turn is related to the expansion
of higher education and a decade of reduction of student grants. The difference with the
situation in 1983 when 5 per cent worked in marginal part-time jobs and 84 per cent in full-
time jobs is striking. We should add that at the time 25 per cent of the non-student working
population under the age of 25 was unemployed, against 7 per cent today.
Part-time work in general is and has remained women’s work (see also Table 3). Of the 2,6
million people working part-time hours in 1997, two million (75 per cent) were women. The
4,5 million full-time workers were divided between 3,5 million men (78 per cent) and one
million women (22 per cent). One-third of all women in employment work full-time; they
tend to be younger, unmarried, or married without children. One-third works half-time jobs
(around 20 hours) or full-time jobs with reduced hours (around 30 hours), whereas the
remaining one-third works small or very small, in fact marginal, part-time jobs. Three-
quarters of these marginal part-time jobs are found in only three sectors: in personal
services, in particular cleaning, in hotel, restaurants and catering, and in retail (CBS 1996,
126).
5 Policies
In the preceding pages I have documented the dramatic changes in the Dutch labour market
and provided background information with regard to the role of union wage and working
time policies. In this section I intend to analyse in greater detail the forces and policies that
lie behind the ‘part-time revolution’. In ’A Dutch Miracle’ (Visser and Hemerijck 1997) we
call the development from the traditional breadwinner to a dual earner economy, based on
one-and-a-half jobs per household model, a fortuitous development. It was not planned, it
happened. Behavioural changes, especially of women, led to different labour market
outcomes and unsolved problems, which in turn provoked policy adjustments and policy
learning of unions, firms and governments. The Dutch development is an illustration of
gender relations shaping a national pattern of employment relations and labour market
developments. (‘O Reilly 1996). The key point is that during the 1980s and 1990s -
determined by the massive entry of women into the labour market - part-time employment
became a mass phenomenon, lost its marginal status and became attractive in its own right.
5.1 From Backwardness to Progress: Women Enter the Labour Force
The rapid increase in part-time employment and the entry of women into the labour force
are two sides of the same story. Twenty-five years ago, the Netherlands had the lowest
labour force participation rate of women within the OECD: 29.2 percent, lower than in
Ireland, Greece, Spain or Italy, each with rates in the low thirties. Within its own region the
low female participation rate was an anomaly: Germany and the United Kingdom had each
rates of 50 percent or higher, Belgium of 40 percent, the Scandinavian countries were
already in a class apart. Since 1973, the labour force participation rate of women has surged
from 29 to 60 percent, which is the strongest rise in any OECD country.
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