What comes to mind when you think about working part time? For Americans who work salaried jobs, part-time work tends to be seen as a choice, even a luxury, something those who can afford it might pursue to spend more time with children, pursue education or simply enjoy more leisure time. But for millions of workers, part-time employment has become a trap.
Across the country, more than 6.7 million Americans tell surveytakers that they work part-time jobs, not because they want to, but because they cannot get full-time hours. For many workers, not getting enough hours causes more hardship than the hourly wage. It’s telling that the platform for Target Workers Unite, a group of rank-and-file Target workers pushing for better working conditions, lists as its first demand not higher pay but more hours. Its second demand? More stable schedules.
A shift from full-time to part-time work across many major American companies over the past 20 years stems in large part from the rise of what’s known as just-in-time scheduling. Instead of guaranteeing the bulk of their staffs 40 hours a week, many big employers largely reliant on low-wage workers make a majority of them part time and then schedule only the bare minimum number that they expect to need. If customer traffic turns out to be busier than anticipated, those companies have a large pool of part-time workers to call in for last-minute shifts.
Workers might get four hours one week and 30 hours the next. The resulting irregular pay can make it harder to progress in other parts of life, like getting approved for apartment leases and auto loans. It also makes working second-jobs more difficult, as part-time workers need to be available to maximize hours at their first job. Turning down a shift can mean being offered fewer shifts in the future. According to the Federal Reserve, adults who work part time because they can’t find full-time work are much more likely to say that they struggle to pay bills or do not have enough to eat.
What all this amounts to is a transfer of risk from business owners and corporate shareholders to the nation’s lowest-paid workers.
For decades, policymakers and activists have devoted far more attention to raising the hourly wage than to the question of how many hours employees are working. For example, New York City lawmakers, echoing a campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, recently introduced legislation to increase the minimum hourly wage paid by employers of over 500 workers from $17 now to $30 in 2030. This is well intended, but because income depends on both the hourly wage and the number of hours worked, improving workers’ lives requires addressing both. One of us worked in a big-box store as part of research for a novel about low-wage work and saw this firsthand. Even an increase of $2 or $3 an hour doesn’t do much if some weeks you’re scheduled only for a single four-hour shift.
That is why we — a novelist and a labor lawyer and policy analyst — have come up with a solution to mandate a federal right to full-time work for many employees currently shunted into undesirable part-time work because that’s all they can find.
Specifically, we propose that part-time employees who work at companies with more than 50 full-time-equivalent employees be given the option to work full time after three months of employment. When a qualifying worker makes such a request, an employer would be required to grant it, provided that doing so would not create an undue burden on the employer (a common standard in employment law).
Such a right would be in keeping with U.S. labor policy since the New Deal. The 40-hour workweek, the federal minimum wage and the right to overtime pay all derive from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The law was designed to combat the problem of overwork. Employers at that time were demanding 70- or 80-hour or even longer workweeks from employees, without paying them more. The law was so successful that by now most of us have come to treat the 40-hour workweek as the standard. Now underwork has become as much of a problem as overwork once was.
Our proposal is not as radical as it may seem. Our labor system has long accepted that employers should balance their profit interests with accommodations that provide stability and security for workers. Several laws — the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act and state workers’ compensation programs — guarantee employees the right to shift to part-time work or to take time off in the case of disability, illness or a medical crisis in the family. These laws also require employers to accommodate requests to return to full-time work once the need for leave or a reduced schedule has passed.
Employers have justified their use of part-time workers by insisting that their employees prefer the flexibility of part-time work. If this is so, nothing would change, as the obligation to provide full-time hours would kick in only when a person made a full-time request. Moreover, because this policy would affect all large employers, it would create an even playing field, meaning that those companies that treat their employees decently would no longer need to fear losing out to more ruthless competitors.
This effort could be politically attractive. American politicians who have been reluctant to increase taxes and spending to reduce inequality and hardship tend to be much more willing to use labor regulations like the one we propose to help achieve those goals.
Americans have long taken pride in the belief that we are a country where those who are willing to work hard can live decently. Establishing a right to full-time work would help millions of Americans achieve that ideal.
Matt Bruenig is a labor lawyer. Adelle Waldman is a novelist.
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