U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS COMPENSATION AND WORKING CONDITIONS

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A Comparison of Hourly Wage Rates for Full- and Part-Time Workers by

Occupation, 2007

by David M. Pongrace and Alan P. Zilberman

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Originally Posted: July 23, 2009

The majority of full-time workers earn more per hour than part-time workers; in some occupations, however, particularly those

in healthcare, part-time workers earn more per hour than their full-time counterparts.

There are twenty-seven million part-time workers in the United States. They may work part time by choice, to supplement

their income from a full-time job, or because full-time work simply is not an option. Using National Compensation Survey

data, this article will answer questions such as the following: How do part-time hourly wages compare with full-time hourly

wages? Do the differences in wages vary by occupation? Do these differences vary geographically? By using NCS national

and regional wage data to answer these questions, this article provides insight into the wage structure of this sizable part of

the U.S. workforce.

Prior Research On NCS Part-time Wages

Previous studies using NCS data have noted the difference in compensation costs of part-time and full-time workers. In his

1994 analysis of the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) program, Mark A. Brinkley writes, “In March 1993,

compensation costs for part-time workers in private industry averaged $9.00 per hour, compared with $18.54 per hour

worked for full-time workers.”1 Brinkley noted that the employer costs of wages and salaries per hour worked for full-time

workers were higher than that of part-time workers; he also found that among the components of compensation cost, “the

largest differences between full-time workers and part-time workers” were for benefit costs.2

While Brinkley compared the overall pay differences between full- and part-time workers in all private industry, Michael K.

Lettau studied the occupational wage rates of full- and part-time workers in the same establishment. In a December 1994

study,3 Lettau examined data from the Employment Cost Index (ECI), a Principal Federal Economic Indicator, and concluded

that part-time workers and full-time workers doing the same job in an establishment do not receive equal pay for the hours

worked. He writes, “The results suggest that an individual can expect a lower wage rate if he or she decides to work part-time

rather than full-time, and much lower benefits per hour.” In a March 1999 article in the Monthly Labor Review, Lettau and

Thomas C. Buchmueller examine benefit costs of full-time workers and part-time workers.4 Using data from the ECI and the 

National Compensation Survey – Benefits (EBS), the authors conclude that benefit costs are higher for full-time workers and

that full-time workers have greater access to benefits than do part-time workers.

The findings of these studies are consistent with the notion that, throughout the Nation, part-time workers consistently receive

relatively less compensation per hour than full-time workers. The present study examines hourly wage rates for part-time

workers and for full-time workers at the national and regional level, predominantly focusing on those situations in which parttime workers earn more per hour than do their full-time counterparts.5

Methodology

For this study, the authors looked at civilian occupations from the 2007 National Compensation Survey for which there were

published wage data for both part-time and full-time positions. Some occupational estimates were available by work level for

both full- and part-time workers, particularly in healthcare and service occupations. This article focuses on occupational

groups without regard to work level. (A study comparing full- and part-time workers by work levels would be an interesting

topic for further analysis.) The study uses a significance test to determine which occupations show a statistically significant

difference in part-time hourly wages and full-time hourly wages.6
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Employees are classified in the NCS as part time or full time based on the definitions used by each establishment. The NCS

provides data on employer costs for wages and salaries and for benefits, as well as details of employer-provided benefits.

Data are shown by sector of the economy (private industry and State and local government), occupational groups, selected

worker characteristics (such as full time and part time, and union and nonunion), and establishment characteristics (such as

number of employees and geographic area).7

Nationwide

In the 2007 NCS national wage bulletin, there are 324 occupations for which average earnings for part-time and full-time

workers can be compared. A majority of these occupations (194) revealed a statistically significant difference between parttime and full-time wages. Of these 194 occupations, full-time workers almost always had higher earnings rates than part-time

workers. Part-time workers had higher wages than full-time workers in only 12 of the 194 occupations. (See table 1.)

Table 1: Mean hourly earnings for occupations in which part-time earnings are greater than full-time earnings, civilian

workers, 2007.

Occupation Full-time Workers Part-time Workers

Computer systems analysts $37.64 $60.10

Clergy 16.23 22.87

Engineering and architecture teachers, postsecondary 57.42 73.56

Therapists 29.59 34.32

Physical therapists 33.82 37.16

Speech-language pathologists 33.20 63.52

Medical and clinical laboratory technologists 23.24 26.69

Dental hygienists 30.60 36.01

Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses 18.50 19.36

Legal secretaries 20.57 23.37

Farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse 9.77 14.51

Construction laborers 15.73 19.69

Geographic Area Differences

As with the national data, when hourly wage data are broken down by geographic area and occupation, full-time workers

earn more per hour than part-time workers. Table 2 shows mean hourly earnings, by census division, for those occupations

in which part-time workers earn more per hour than full-time workers.8 As can be seen from the table, the most common

occupations in which part-time workers earn more per hour than full-time workers are healthcare occupations.9
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Table 2: Mean hourly earnings for occupations in which part-time earnings are greater than full-time worker earnings,

by census division, civilian workers, 2007

Census division and occupation (1) All workers Full-time workers Part-time workers

East North Central

Physicians and surgeons $84.94 $78.72 $139.95

East South Central

Registered nurses 27.29 26.81 29.95

Middle Atlantic

Physicians and surgeons 56.56 55.25 73.60

Mountain

Social workers 18.33 17.70 24.62

Therapists 26.69 25.04 37.76

New England

Clinical laboratory technologists and technicians 20.92 20.54 25.16

Pacific

Preschool and kindergarten teachers 16.05 15.80 23.46

Preschool teachers, except special education 13.84 13.43 23.46

Registered nurses 38.57 37.36 42.35

Respiratory therapists 27.86 27.08 30.18

Vocational education teachers, postsecondary 29.62 25.26 39.00

Dental hygienists 41.14 36.75 45.23

Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses 21.64 21.16 23.79

Truck drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer 19.40 19.40 20.30

South Atlantic

Physical Therapists 33.10 31.71 40.11

Social sciences teachers, postsecondary 46.29 45.84 57.18

Therapists 27.21 26.27 34.23

Radiologic technologists and technicians 25.23 24.37 30.71

West North Central

Miscellaneous postsecondary teachers 24.64 23.93 31.69

Waiters and waitresses 4.83 4.27 5.10

Footnotes:

(1) The West South Central division has no occupations in which part-time earnings were greater than full-time earnings.

Note: The States (and the District of Columbia) that comprise the census divisions are: New England: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts,

New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont; Middle Atlantic: New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania; South Atlantic: Delaware, District of

Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia; East South Central: Alabama, Kentucky,

Mississippi, and Tennessee; West South Central: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas; East North Central: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan,

Ohio, and Wisconsin; West North Central: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota; Mountain:

Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; and Pacific: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and

Washington.

As mentioned previously, very few part-time workers earn more per hour than their full-time counterparts. The number of

occupations published in the divisional bulletins in which part-time workers earn more than full-time workers ranges from zero

to eight; one census division, West South Central, published none. The number of occupational categories and specific

occupations varies across the census divisions because of sample design and publication standards. (See table 3.)
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Table 3: Occupations with a statistically significant difference between full-time and part-time wage rates, by

geographic area, civilian workers, 2007

Geographic

area

Total number

of

occupations

Part-time workers earning

less than full-time workers

Part-time workers earning

more than full-time workers

Occupations in which part-time

workers earn more per hour than fullNumber of time workers

occupations

As a

percentage of

all part-time

occupations

Number of

occupations

As a

percentage of

all part-time

occupations

United

States 194 182 93.8 12 6.2

Farm workers and laborers, crop,

nursery, and greenhouse; Medical

and clinical laboratory technologists;

Computer systems analysts; Clergy;

Engineering and architecture

teachers, postsecondary; Therapists;

Physical therapists; Speech-language

pathologists; Dental hygienists;

Licensed practical and licensed

vocational nurses; Legal secretaries;

Construction laborers

East

North

Central

89 88 98.9 1 1.1 Physicians and surgeons

East

South

Central

21 20 95.2 1 4.8 Registered nurses

Middle

Atlantic 69 68 98.6 1 1.4 Physicians and surgeons

Mountain 41 39 95.1 2 4.8 Social workers; Therapists

New

England 35 34 97.1 1 2.9 Clinical laboratory technologists and

technicians

Pacific 67 59 88.1 8 11.9

Preschool and Kindergarten

Teachers; Preschool teachers, except

special education; Registered nurses;

Respiratory therapists; Vocational

education teachers, postsecondary;

Dental hygienists; Licensed practical

and licensed vocational nurses; Truck

drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer

South

Atlantic 75 71 94.7 4 5.3

Therapists; Social sciences teachers,

postsecondary; Physical therapists;

Radiologic technologists and

technicians

West

North

Central

49 47 95.9 2 4.1 Miscellaneous postsecondary

teachers; Waiters and waitresses

West

South

Central

49 49 100 0 0 (none)
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Conclusion

This analysis shows that the majority of full-time workers earn more per hour than their part-time counterparts. These findings

are consistent with previous studies and demonstrate that this relationship is true across census divisions nationwide. For

many of the divisions, part-time workers in healthcare occupations earned more per hour than their full-time counterparts.10

Still, this finding is not uniform across all healthcare occupations.

David M. Pongrace

Economist, Division of Compensation Data Analysis and Planning, Office of Compensation and Working Conditions, Bureau of

Labor Statistics.

Telephone: (202) 691-6204; E-mail: Pongrace.David@bls.gov. Alan P. Zilberman

Economist, Division of Compensation Data Analysis and Planning, Office of Compensation and Working Conditions, Bureau of

Labor Statistics.

Telephone: (202) 691-5179; E-mail: Zilberman.Alan@bls.gov. Notes

1 See Mark A. Brinkley, “Employer Costs for Employee Compensation to Include Information on Part-time and Full-time Workers,” 

Compensation and Working Conditions, June 1994.

2 Ibid, p. 4.

3 Michael K. Lettau, “Compensation in Part-time Jobs Versus Full-time Jobs: What if the Job is the Same?,” Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Working Paper 260, Office of Research and Evaluation, December 1994; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ore/abstract/ec/

ec940080.htm.

4 Michael K. Lettau and Thomas C. Buchmueller, “Comparing Benefit Costs for Part-time and Full-time Workers,” Monthly Labor Review, March 1999, pp. 30-35; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1999/03/art4full.pdf.

5 Jerome E. King examined the differences between part-time and full-time wage rates in terms of density of part-time workers within

occupational category, ratios of benefit costs to total compensation, and other measures. He found marked compositional differences by

occupation between private industry and State and local government. He also found that part-time workers received a higher percentage of

their total compensation in wages and salaries than did full-time workers, and that part-time workers in the health field typically received higher

average hourly earnings than did their full-time counterparts. See “Part-time Workers Earnings: Some Comparisons,” Compensation and

Working Conditions, Summer 2000, pp. 27-36; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/archive/summer2000art5.pdf.

6 The authors tested the difference of the standard errors of full-time and part-time mean wages, at a significance level of 0.1, to determine

whether an occupation had a significantly higher wage for part-time workers than for full-time workers. For more information, see Research

Methods Knowledge Base, on the Internet at http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/power.php.

7 See BLS Handbook of Methods, available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/home.htm.

8 The census divisions are as follows: New England comprises Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and

Vermont; Middle Atlantic comprises New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania; South Atlantic comprises Delaware, the District of Columbia,

Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia; East South Central comprises Alabama, Kentucky,

Mississippi, and Tennessee; West South Central comprises Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas; East North Central comprises Illinois,

Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin; West North Central comprises Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and

South Dakota; Mountain comprises Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; and Pacific comprises

Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington.

9 For more information on hourly wages for full- and part-time workers by occupation and census division, see Nine Census Summaries on the

BLS website at http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/compub.htm#Division.

10 Part-time nurses may earn higher wages because they already receive benefit coverage from a primary employer, allowing them to forego

benefits in favor of higher pay at their second job. For another example of this occurrence, see Karen Shahpoori and James Smith, “Wages in

Profit and Nonprofit Hospitals and Universities,” Compensation and Working Conditions Online, June 2005; available on the Internet at http://

www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20050624ar01p1.htm.
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