| Code | SL.TLF.PART.ZS |
| Indicator Name | Part time employment, total (% of total employment) |
| Short definition | Part-time employment rate represents the percentage of employment that is part time. Part time employment in this series is based on a common definition of less than 35 actual weekly hours worked. |
| Long definition | Part-time employment rate represents the percentage of employment that is part time. Part time employment in this series is based on a common definition of less than 35 actual weekly hours worked. |
| Source | Wages and Working Time Statistics database (COND), International Labour Organization (ILO), uri: https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/bulk/, publisher: ILOSTAT, type: external database, date accessed: September 25, 2025 |
| Topic | Social Protection & Labor: Economic activity |
| Dataset | WB_WDI |
| Unit of measure | % of total employment |
| Periodicity | Annual |
| Reference period | 1976-2024 |
| Aggregation method | Weighted average |
| Statistical concept and methodology | Methodology: Labor force surveys are typically the preferred source of information on hours of work. Such surveys can be designed to cover virtually the entire non-institutional population of a given country, all branches of economic activity, all sectors of the economy and all categories of workers, including the self-employed, contributing family workers, casual workers and multiple jobholders.
Other types of household surveys could also be used as sources of data on hours of work, if they have an appropriate module on the topic.
In the absence of a labor force survey or other types of household surveys with a module on working time, an establishment survey can be used as a source of statistics on hours of work. However, the statistics derived from establishments surveys would typically not refer to the whole employed population but only to employees (and often only to formal sector employees or non-agricultural formal sector employees).
Statistical concept(s): Employment comprises all persons of working age who during a specified brief period, such as one week or one day, were in the following categories: a) paid employment (whether at work or with a job but not at work); or b) self-employment (whether at work or with an enterprise but not at work). |
| Development relevance | Part-time employment has been seen as an instrument to increase labor supply. Indeed, as part-time work may offer the chance of a better balance between working life and family responsibilities, and suits workers who prefer shorter working hours and more time for their private life, it may allow more working-age persons to actually join the labor force. Also, policy-makers have promoted part-time work in an attempt to redistribute working time in countries of high unemployment, thus lowering politically sensitive unemployment rates without requiring an increase in the total number of hours worked.
Part-time employment, however, is not always a choice. While flexibility may be one advantage of part-time work, disadvantages may exist in comparison with colleagues who work full time. Since the early 1990s, most OECD countries have introduced measures to improve the quality of part-time work, for example with respect to social benefits for part-time workers in line with those of full-time workers. Nevertheless, occupational segregation between part-time and full-time work remains an issue in most countries as it limits the occupational choices of part-time workers.
Looking at part-time employment by sex is useful to see the extent to which the female labor force is more likely to work part time than the male labor force. |
| Other notes | Relevance to gender indicator: More and more women are working part-time and one of the concern is that part time work does not provide the stability that full time work does. |
| License URL | https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/public-licenses#cc-by |
| License Type | CC BY-4.0 |
| |