More are employed part time, whether they want to be or not

WASHINGTON -- For an increasing number of U.S workers, it's either part time or no time.

A record 7.3 million people were working part time in November although they wanted to work full time, up 62% from a year ago and accounting for 5% of the total workforce, the highest proportion in 15 years. They were working less because their hours were cut or the only job they could find was part time, according to the Labor Department.

Such workers count as having a job and are not part of the official unemployment rate, which was 6.7% in November, up from 6.5% in October and the highest in 15 years. But that number only tells part of the story.

If you add those who gave up seeking work and those whose only option was part time, unemployment or underemployment was 12.5% in November, up from 11.8% in October and highest since the government began tracking the number in 1994.

Richard Moody, chief economist at Mission Residential in Austin, calls the part-time work trend "another ominous sign" that the job market is likely to get far worse. Companies often shift to part-time workers when demand slows. If sales don't improve, the jobs are cut entirely, he says.

"The unemployment rate has much, much farther up to go," Moody says, predicting the rate will peak around 9% at the end of next year.

Employers slashed a seasonally adjusted 533,000 jobs last month, the swiftest pace in 34 years in November, the government said in a report that pointed to a rapidly deepening recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research said last week that the USA is in a recession that began in December 2007, making the current downturn longer than the 2001 and 1990-91 recessions, the most recent.

Employers cut more than 1.9 million jobs in the first 11 months of 2008. More than 10.3 million were jobless in November, the most in 25 years. The data are likely to add momentum to efforts in Washington to enact a stimulus package, which could include funding for infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Congress last month extended jobless benefits for the second time this year.