Incidence of FTPT employment - national definitions

Description

This table contains incidences and gender composition of part-time employment with standardised (15-24, 25-54, 55-64, 65+, total) and detailed age groups. Data are further broken down by professional status - employees, total employment. Part-time employment is based on national definitions.
The definition of part-time work varies considerably across OECD countries Essentially three main approaches can be distinguished: i) a classification based on the worker's perception of his/her employment situation; ii) a cut-off (generally 30 or 35 hours per week) based on usual working hours, with persons usually working fewer hours being considered part-timers; iii) a comparable cut-off based on actual hours worked during the reference week. A criterion based on actual hours will generally yield a part-time rate higher than one based on usual hours, particularly if there are temporary reductions in working time as a result of holidays, illness, short-timing, etc. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear whether a classification based on the worker's perception will necessarily yield estimates of part-time work that are higher or lower than one based on a fixed cut-off. In one country (France) which changed from 1981 to 1982 from a definition based on an actual hours cut-off (30 hours) to one based on the respondent's perception, the latter criterion appeared to produce slightly higher estimates. Other data characteristics