Company structures of part-time employment in western and eastern Germany : results from the IAB establishment panel of 1993, 1996 and 1998

Abstract

"An outstanding significance for labour market and employment policy is attached to the expansion of part-time employment, whether it is in the sense of a defensive strategy to redistribute the available volume of working hours or in the context of an active, more growth-orientated labour market policy to tap the potential of new part-time jobs that has not yet been fully utilised. On the basis of data from the IAB establishment panel, this paper portrays the development of company utilisation of part-time work since 1993 in western Germany and since 1996 in eastern Germany and analyses it in the context of further company characteristics. The results show in the end that the upwards trend in the utilisation of part-time employment is slowing down and that the development in the old Länder is not uniform. In the new Länder on the other hand, which started from a clearly lower level, it is possible to determine a constant catching-up trend. However, there continue to be considerable differences in the structure of part-time employment in western and eastern Germany as regards the number of hours worked per week. Part-time jobs at the lower end of the range of working time are of great relevance in the old Länder; the part-time working hours in eastern Germany are on average clearly closer to the full-time norm. According to the econometric analyses of the data from the IAB establishment panel, the extent of company utilisation of part-time work is not only connected as expected with the gender-specific and qualification-related composition of the staff. In western Germany establishments with a strong utilisation of part-time work stand out just as much for belonging more to a young, small-firm segment and for doing worse with regard to their strength of economic innovation than establishments with lower part-time rates. For eastern Germany such clear contours of company part-time structures can not be detected. It remains to be seen whether such structures will yet develop if eastern Germany's part-time gap is closed." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Düll, H. & Ellguth, P. (1999): Betriebliche Strukturen der Teilzeitbeschäftigung in West- und Ostdeutschland. Ergebnisse aus dem IAB-Betriebspanel 1993, 1996 und 1998. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 32, No. 3, p. 269-280.