Close to 6 million jobs were created since the employment recovery started in 2010. There are always questions as to what percent of these jobs are part-time employment? And it we use January 2010 as the base, almost all of new jobs, except for half-a-million are full-time jobs. So, what is the answer? Are almost all of the new jobs full time? To answer this question correctly we have to look at the entire picture.

To do so we have to start with January 2008 when blood letting in the job market started. This period lasted through December 2009. During which 11 million full time jobs were lost. Part time jobs, however, moved in the opposite direction, more than 2.7 million part time jobs were created during this period. Clearly some full time jobs were replaced with part time employees. Thus the reported as 8.3 million clearly underestimates the financial devastation that was experienced by American work force.

The job recovery was almost entirely in full time jobs, and it has not been a continuos smooth process; close to 2 million full time jobs were created in the first half of 2010, then a million of them were lost in the second half of the same year. It took the full time job market until mid-2011 before it again showed 2 million jobs gained since the depth of the recession. The number of new jobs grew rapidly to 4 million by winter of 2012. Full time jobs are continuing to add up, however, at a decidedly slower growth rate since then, reaching 5.5 million new full time jobs by June 2013.

Part time jobs, which initially dropped as full time jobs rose, oscillated between half-a-million gain or loss since then.
Total job loss due to the Great Recession was recorded as close to 8 million jobs by the end of 2009. The job recovery has trimmed the total job loss by 6 million, reducing it to around 2 million jobs. During the same period, part time jobs recovered a gain of more 3 million new jobs, almost all of them during the period when full time jobs lost 11 million amongst their ranks.

The brunt of the recession was beared by the full time job holders. Despite the job recovery over the last three-and-a-half years only half of the full time jobs lost has been recovered.