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November 17, 1997
Part-time jobs left out of up-skilling trend, new report finds
Ottawa – According to a research report released today by the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD), most part-time workers have been left behind in the labour market trend towards highly skilled jobs that use new technologies.
Although employment growth in the 1990s has been strongest in the knowledge-intensive industries, most part-time workers – who now hold nearly one in five jobs in Canada – still work in low-skilled jobs in clerical, sales, and service occupations.
"It is disturbing to find that most part-time workers have little access to jobs that require a knowledge of computers, because those are generally the types of jobs that offer decent rates of pay, benefits, and longer term security," says Grant Schellenberg, the author of The Changing Nature of Part-time Work.
"We looked at several surveys regarding the impact of the new technologies on jobs, and by every measure, it was clear that part-time jobs in all categories, including the professional occupations, required fewer skills," says Schellenberg, assistant research director at the CCSD.
Part-time jobs are held mainly by women aged 25 years and older, and by young people. Men over age 25 hold only 15 per cent of all part-time jobs.
The 49-page report also compares the hourly wages, benefits, and job security of part-time and full-time workers, and finds that part-time workers lag far behind full-time workers in each area.
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The Changing Nature of Part-Time Work - Related Material
Canadian Council on Social Development,
309 Cooper Street, 5th Floor,
Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 0G5
Tel: (613) 236-8977, Fax: (613) 236-2750, Web: www.ccsd.ca, Email: council@ccsd.ca
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