If you’re a man, working part-time can reduce your chances ofgetting a new job as much as unemployment does

Unemployment often has wide-ranging negative consequences for those who experience it, including making it harder to get a new job. But what effect does part-time work or work in a job below a person’s skill level have? In new research, David S. Pedulla investigates the effects of these ‘nonstandard’ and ‘mismatched’ jobs on people’s employment chances. By sending out thousands of fake job applications for male and female applicants with distinct employment histories, while holding all else constant, he finds callback rates for men in full-time employment was 10.4 percent, compared to 4.8 percent for those in part-time work and 4.7 percent for those in jobs below their skill level. By contrast, women in full-time and part-time work had little difference in their callback rates.