​The ‘Invisible’ Employment Statistic We Should Be Thinking About This Labor Day

Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly jobs report, and once again, it was filled with kind-of good news. The unemployment rate had dropped, again, to a new recent low of 5.1 percent (with 8 million Americans unemployed)—nearly half the unemployment rate than was found in the wake of the great recession. Alongside that happy figure, however, there were some troubling signs that are especially pertinent to consider this Labor Day: The number of workers who could only find part time work hovered, as it has for years, at 6.5 million.

Or, as the BLS put it, "The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed in August at 6.5 million. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job."

Part-time work runs the gamut, but has in recent years become a staple of the so-called "gig economy," and is embraced, even celebrated, by the tech companies like Uber, Etsy, and TaskRabbit that rely on temporary labor. Uber is a particularly salient point of reference, as it currently faces the prospect of a class action lawsuit on behalf of 160,000 of its drivers, some of whom feel they have been inappropriately classified as part-time contractors when they are doing the work of a full-time employee.

They're part of the 6.5 million workers who do part-time work to make ends meet, but actively want full-time jobs. And that class of worker is both poised to proliferate, and currently underserved in the current system, which is built to binarily recognize employed or unemployed workers—not underemployed workers.

"They're not part-time workers as much as they're part-time unemployed," Mary Alice McCarthy, a New America Senior Policy Analyst, recently said at a symposium on the future of work, "so when we think about what sorts of policies are appropriate for that 6.5 million, they look a lot more like the policies we direct to unemployed people. This is a population really in serious distress, but the problem is… they're kind of invisible."

The gig economy is often touted by the companies that use it as being more flexible and freeing to workers, who aren't beholden to 9-5 drudgery. And to be sure, there are millions of satisfactorily employed part-time workers—as of June, 18.6 percent of the entire American workforce was part-time. But a very large percentage remains decidedly unsatisfied. Think of it this way, maybe: for every two Uber drivers who are satisfied, at least enough to say so on a BLS survey, with their "flexible" employment, there is another who considers his situation involuntary, and would prefer, or need, the benefits and protections of full-time employment. They are underemployed, and, as McCarthy notes, probably closer in their needs to the unemployed.

This contingent of precarious workers is huge, and persistent, even as the official unemployment rate shrinks. If you were to combine the number of the involuntarily part-time employed (6.5 million) with the 1.8 million Americans who are considered "marginally attached to the labor force," and were excluded from the "unemployed" category because they hadn't looked for a job in the month before the survey, then the true number of out-of-work Americans is actually double the 5.1 percent unemployment figure—it's closer to exactly what it was during the Great Recession.

That's why upcoming battles like the Uber suit are so important—they hold major sway over what the future of work will look like. As automation continues to cast those who held traditional manufacturing and service jobs into more precarious modes of employment, the purveyors of the gig economy will be there to scoop them up. What sort of protections and safeguards are there for the perpetually part-time workforce will be a serious question in the near-future.

So this Labor Day, let's not just think about that falling employment rate; think about the hidden workers who are stuck in a purgatory of half-promise; doing full-time work for part-time wages, driving a personal taxi for 10 hours a day but longing for employer-provided health care. The too-invisible, perma-part-timer that may come to exemplify more and more of our workforce. His or her fate could be yours, too.