Why traditionally full-time jobs are turning part-time

Job seeker demand for greater flexibility is leading to a boost in part-time employment in nontraditional roles like HR, marketing and media, as more workers look to tailor their work to better fit their own lifestyles.

The share of part-time openings has climbed since 2022 while full-time openings stayed flat, according to new research from Indeed, and that’s true across most industries.

In marketing roles, the share of postings for part-time jobs rose 10 percentage points over the past two years, while those in media rose nearly 9 percentage points, according to the hiring platform.

The boost in part-time work in traditionally white-collar industries is allowing employers to attract talented workers who may not be able to work in other arrangements, and allows companies to keep labor costs down while still employing highly knowledgeable and experienced staff, experts say. 

“Some of the ways that employers have had to become more flexible is potentially a longer-lasting trend,” said Daniel Culbertson, a senior economist at Indeed who led the research. The rise in part-time work isn’t a temporary post-pandemic shift, he said. “It seems to be a bit more stable than that.”

Kathryn Byberg, founder and CEO of Little Leaf Agency, employs a handful of part-time staff. The three-year-old agency, which specializes in sexual wellness communications and takes on clients in the niche space, has 16 employees — all working remotely — and just six are working full-time.

Many of the part-time staffers are new mothers or working parents with years of experience in the PR world, like Byberg when she started the agency. Others are Gen Z employees with side hustles they dedicate the rest of their time to. Part-time arrangements vary, but most are on schedules where they work either two or three days a week and are paid for the hours worked.  

Taking on part-time staff works well for the business, providing more flexible and tailored schedules to staff while keeping costs down as a start-up. And it’s allowed Byberg to bring on some really talented and experienced PR professionals who aren’t currently able to work full-time roles, she said. “This has allowed us to kind of keep a lot of people working and also to really keep a lot of highly talented people working,” she said. 

“I can afford them, I don’t have to commit to a full-time salary, but I can bring them in and have their expertise on the team on a part-time basis,” she said. “It allows us as an agency to really develop our skill set and to ensure that the younger members of the team are learning from the best in the industry, and it offers our clients that level of security that they really do have the best in the industry,” she said. 

“It allows us as an agency to really develop our skill set and to ensure that the younger members of the team are learning from the best in the industry, and it offers our clients that level of security that they really do have the best in the industry.”

Kathryn Byberg, founder and CEO of Little Leaf Agency,

Indicate Media is another agency that now has part-time staff and started offering the roles post-pandemic. The technology B2B PR agency has six full-time remote employees and four part-time. The part-time staff are on more of a freelance basis where they are paid based on the amount of work they do rather than hours spent working, said Todd Barrish, founder and president of Indicate.

Indicate has a very specific client base and creating campaigns and messaging for them requires having a certain level of specific expertise, Barrish said. “We don’t necessarily need full-time people to do all the things we need to do a lot of times. We need specialists,” he said. 

Part-time staff typically work on specific campaigns or projects in roles as technical writers, content developers and media specialists. “It allows them to just stay focused on the task at hand, we can be very clear in what the objectives are,” he said. 

Freelancing opportunities have exploded post-pandemic, rising 40% since 2019, according to data from Revelio Labs. The majority of freelancing is done as a side hustle today, suggesting for some, their primary jobs may just not be enough to make ends meet. 

The largest share of workers who freelance as a side hustle are millennials, Revelio’s report found. 

“This generation has wrestled with numerous challenges since entering the workforce following the Great Recession, primarily due to stagnant wages and widening inequality. The pandemic and subsequent inflation further exacerbated these issues, making it increasingly difficult for millennials to make ends meet, and leading many to resort to multiple jobs, including freelance work, to manage rising living costs and the burden of student debt,” the report said.