The First Part-TIME Economy in the World
Does it Work?
The comparison with the United States is interesting. Like elsewhere, the halt in wage
growth in the 1980s and 1990s reflected the change from a seller’s to a buyer’s market,
especially with respect to unskilled and semi-skilled labour. Unemployment in the early
1980s was high in both countries, and over the 1983-93 period average unemployment is
only one percentage higher in the Netherlands (7.7%) than in the U.S. (6.8%). Both
countries also shared sustained labour force growth, 1.5% per year on average in the decade
between 1983 and 1993, which is nearly three times the influx of new recruits to the labour
market in the European Union. In the United States wage restraint appears to have been
dictated by the market and has affected mainly, if not exclusively, workers at the lower end
of the wage distribution. Real wages of unskilled workers in the U.S. have declined during
the past two decades with one percent per year. Wage inequality indicators, such as the
D5/D1 ratio or the Gini-index, show a sharp rise in inequality (Freeman and Katz 1994;
OECD Employment Outlook 1996, Ch. 3; OECD 1998).
Earnings inequality has increased in the Netherlands in the past decade, as it did in nearly all
countries except West Germany and Belgium, but the increase has been fairly modest. The
Netherlands is located between the highly unionised Scandinavian countries and Belgium on
the one hand, and the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, countries in
which the unions are weak or have been weakened in the past decade, on the other. The
Dutch employment miracle shows that success can be achieved without a sharp rise in
earnings inequality (Visser and Hemerijck 1997). Unlike wage developments in the US,
wage moderation in the Netherlands has been part of a concerted policy by the trade unions
during the past fifteen years. It is an essential element of that policy that they have put the
brakes on the growth of higher earnings as well. Moreover, the statutory minimum wage,
although relevant for only a small percentage of the adult workforce, reduces earnings
differentials between men and women, between firms and sectors, and reduces exploitation
of unskilled workers in the sweat trades (Roorda and Vogels 1997). Steeply declining
minimum wage rates for young workers (beginning at 60 per cent of the adult minimum
wage which is reached at age 23) imply that this shield is less effective in the case of young
people. In the Netherlands the statutory minimum wage for adult workers used to be very
high by international standards, since it had to provide for a family with a full-time
housewife and two children. The minimum wage has since 1982 been lowered and frozen
until 1990 and again between 1993 and 1996, and its current value, expressed as percentage
of the average wage has declined to 51.1 percent, compared to 64.4 percent in 1980 and
54.6 percent in 1990. In real terms (purchasing parities), the adult minimum wage in the
Netherlands in 1995 was lower than in Belgium but higher than the SMIC in France and
almost twice as high as in the United States (Roorda and Vogels 1997: 22).
The Netherlands is moving from a single earner (breadwinner) to a dual or one-and-a-half
earner (part-time) economy. In 1975 about 85 percent of all married men between 15-64
were sole breadwinners; in 1994 this proportion has dropped to one half. The one-and-a-half
job model is still gaining ground. This is of course no equality. In most cases the one-and-
the-half earner model means that the man works full-time, the women part-time. This shows
up in different incomes. The available intra-household income statistics suggest that, on
average, women earn 30-35 percent of the household income. Time budget data show that
there is no equal balance of paid and unpaid work between the sexes either. In two-earning
households with young children, men tend to spend on average 10 hours, women 28 hours
per week on household chores and child care, whereas men tend to spend 18 hours more on
paid work (de Hart 1995: 58).
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