Who are "they?" BLS or the politicians?
You are getting that 94% number from
The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015 by Katz and Krueger.
They looked at 3 snapshots: 1995, 2005, and 2015. They found that "The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements – defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers – rose from 10.1 percent in February 2005 to 15.8" and accounted for 94% of the job gains.
So you just made up "seasonal, part time, low skill/low wage." And it doesn't take an Economist to realize that while regular jobs crashed in 2008 and didn't start to recover until 2010, that alternative work jobs would not have been affected, and in fact would have increased while regular jobs dropped and then increased again.
Not seeking, or no longer seeking? Big difference. And since the numbers not in the labor force are mostly voluntary, I'm not sure why you think it's important.
Parse it however you like. The fact remains...
Is Part-Time and Temporary Employment the ‘New Normal’?
Suzanne Tucker/Shutterstock
Is Part-Time and Temporary Employment the ‘New Normal’?
By Staff
Dec 9, 2016 - 12:15pm
In a new report, the Economic Policy Institute finds that “an ongoing structural shift toward more intensive use of part-time employment by many employers is driving the elevated rate of involuntary part-time work” in the US, leaving 6.4 million American workers with part-time hours when they would prefer to be working full-time:
Not getting enough hours is the “time-related” type of underemployment, a phenomenon where people may be working but not up to their desired amount, and it is a sign of labor underutilization in the economy. The monthly rate of workers in the U.S. labor market who are working “part time for economic reasons”—who are considered “involuntary” part-timers because they want to and are available to work full time—is the most consistent indicator of such underemployment. That rate is higher now that it was before the Great Recession and during the depths of the early 2000s recession. That it remains stubbornly high indicates that there is more labor market slack than is captured by the unemployment rate alone. …
This report suggests that, in addition to cyclical forces (in this case, lingering effects of the recession), there is an ongoing structural shift in many businesses toward more intensive use of part-time employment, driving the elevated rate of involuntary part-time employment. Increased employer use of part-time positions is particularly evident in industries in which part-time jobs are already more prevalent, such as retail, and hotels and food service.
Dan Kopf at Quartz highlights some updated research from economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz (whose work we’ve looked at before) finding that from 2005 to 2015, almost all of the new jobs created in the US economy were not traditional full-time jobs but rather temporary, contract, or “gig economy” work:
“We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment. …
Katz and Krueger found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015—with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm.
The decline of conventional full-time work has impacted every demographic. Whether this change is good or bad depends on what kinds of jobs people want. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” said Krueger. “While many of those who value flexibility and have a spouse with a steady job have probably gained.”
