Why Minnesota has so many non-full-time jobs — and why that’s both good and bad for the economy

New state data show that Minnesota employers have plenty of job vacancies, but more than half of them are part-time, temporary and seasonal — which might explain one reason companies are having a hard time filling them.

“Those jobs tend to have unpredictable hours and may get harder for employees to budget and spend time with their family and friends,” said Frank Manzo, the policy director at the St. Paul-based Midwest Economic Policy Institute. “They also kind of pay lower wages and lack employer-provided benefits.”

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) put the number of job vacancies in this year’s second quarter at nearly 123,000, an increase of 26 percent from the same period a year ago.

Of those, 44 percent were part-time, which the government defines as positions that offer less than 35 hours per week, and 15 percent were temporary or seasonal — bringing the total number of non-full-time jobs to nearly 60 percent.

So is it good or bad for the economy to have too many non-full-time jobs? The answer is much in the eyes of the beholder, economists say.

The good side

People choose part-time work for many reasons, of course. For some, it can offer the freedom to balance employment and family by giving them flexible hours to work and take care of their children or elderly parents. For others, it can provide them with an opportunity to earn a second source of income.

For companies, creating part-time work has several advantages: It increases flexibility and allows companies to step up at peak hours when customers are increasingly wanting their goods and services on demand.

Part-time jobs also allow employers to test out some of their new employees and train them on limited bases before they commit to hiring them full-time — while cutting the cost of payrolls since companies typically don’t provide part-time workers with benefits, including overtime compensation, health-insurance coverage, paid family and sick leave and retirement plans.

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