Half-time Salary / Part-Time Professional

So I’m in an odd situation where contract work simply won’t do, and I’m trying to sort out my options.

I can do well on about half the salary I’d earn working full-time, so you would think part-time work would make sense. The problem? Part time jobs typically pay less than half hour-for-hour what their full-time counterparts would pay, under the assumption that anyone working part-time doesn’t need to make a living. So instead of earning half of a full-time salary for half of a full-time schedule, it’s more like earning a quarter of a full-time salary for half-time hours.

In my case, that is not a livable wage, so I would be forced to work full-time or take multiple jobs to earn enough to live. Wouldn’t it make more sense to take the higher full-time salary in the first place? It would if I didn’t feel so strongly about being home with my kids when they are home. That’s a strange sentiment these days, I know, but one I’d hope some people out there can understand.

So there lies my dilemma; all my cards are on the table. This is what I want, and I’m fully aware that business simply can’t operate on the demands of its potential employees. But could there be some real benefits for employers to work with part-time professionals? Here are a few I could think of:

– If you’re a smaller company that might not need a full-time employee, you can get full-quality at half-price.
– You could also pay half (or even less) what you normally would for medical benefits and other full-time perks.
– Because part-time professional positions are rare and valuable, and because they allow the worker such flexibility, you’re less likely to have problems with turnover.
– How productive is an eight-hour work day anyway? A shorter shift increases productivity, and you get more for your money.

I’ll see if I can find some scholarly articles and research to help back this up, particularly the bit on higher productivity in shorter shifts, but I think anyone who has worked 8 hours per day and observed their coworkers doing the same knows that much time is spent gabbing, goofing off, and otherwise not really being productive — the idea being that so long as an employee is in the building for at least 8 hours per day, a company will get their money’s worth.

In the meantime, if anyone’s aware of a company that could use a part-time designer/marketer/geek, let me know. I am looking.