| Sumario: | Part of a special section on welfare to work. The writer explores, from the perspectives of both the employer and the employee, the obstacles to part-time employment, both regulatory and resulting from natural market conditions. From the perspective of labor demand, employers face a number of fixed costs of employing workers, including costs of hiring and training employees, costs of dismissal, and various forms of taxation. However, it is not clear that these costs hinder the employment of part-time workers, since part-timers can be paid less to reflect the employer's extra costs. On the labor supply perspective, government policies in a number of areas can be changed to promote part-time work. Cutting a proportion of welfare benefits,that rather than all of them, for part-time employment would persuade recipients to accept such employment. Relaxing the restrictions many states and localities impose on entry to some potential part-time businesses could increase the number of part-time positions. Finally, cutting taxes would increase the return to part-time work.
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