Part-Time for Economic Reasons

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 4.4 million people worked part time for economic reasons in August 2026, down from 4.8 million in July 2026. Over 12 months the count is down from 4.8 million in August 2025.

BLS counts someone here when they worked 1 to 34 hours in the survey week and gave an economic reason: slack work or poor business conditions, only being able to find part-time work, or a seasonal drop in demand. Their usual hours can be full time, so a full-time worker whose hours were cut that week is included. People who usually work part time must also say they want and are available for full-time work. Everyone in the count has a job, so none of them are unemployed; the broader U-6 Underemployment Rate adds them to the jobless and the marginally attached.

For a worker paid by the hour, fewer hours means a smaller paycheck, while bills such as rent, a car loan or insurance stay the same. The count does not say how many hours each person lost or how long they have been part time. It is a count of people, not a share of workers, so it can grow as total employment grows. The headline Unemployment Rate leaves this group out, because it counts them as employed.

The count is seasonally adjusted: BLS removes the swings that repeat every year, so one month can be compared with the next. It comes from a household survey, and BLS publishes no margin of error for it. This page calls a one-month move under about 280,000 people, or a 12-month move under about 350,000, little changed; that cutoff is our estimate scaled from BLS's margin for the number of unemployed people, not a BLS figure. BLS tightened the definition in January 1994, so comparisons on this page start there. The survey did not run in October 2025, during the federal government shutdown, so there is no figure for that month.