March 10, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Full-time on-call workers most likely to be men

Adult men working on-call were more than twice as likely to be employed full-time than were adult women in 1999. Women employed on-call were about twice as likely to work full-time than were 16 to 19 years olds of both sexes.

Percent of on-call workers employed full time, by sex and age, February 1999
[Chart data—TXT]

In 1999, 72.7 percent of all adult men working on-call were working full-time compared to 33.4 percent of all  adult women. Among teenagers  working on-call, 16.2 percent were employed full-time. Overall, 49.4 percent of all on-call workers were working full-time.

On-call workers do not have an established schedule for reporting to work, but rather work on an as-needed basis. They may be scheduled to work for months at a time, as a substitute teacher, for example.

These data are a product of a February supplement to the monthly Current Population Survey. Find out more in "Characteristics of and preference for alternative work arrangements, 1999," by Marisa DiNatale, Monthly Labor Review, March 2001.