Work Status In the Past Decade Among Single Parent and Married Couple Families

The charts below show the average annual percent of single parent and married couple families by work status. These data were averaged over the last ten years, from 2005 to 2014 for each family type (single moms, single dads, and married couples).

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Worker Status: Full-Time and Part-Time Workers in Families

Two parent working families are something we often read about, but rarely see data on. The PUMS data for our region provides some insight into full-time as well as part-time workers in families.

The graph below shows the prominence of full-time workers, part-time workers, and no workers for families with two parents present, as well as single parent families.  Almost three out of four two parent families (72.4%) have at least one full time worker present. However, only 40% of two parent or married couple families are lucky enough to have BOTH parents working full time jobs. In addition, as many as a quarter of two parent families (26%) only have a single full time worker, where the spouse has no employment.

When looking at working fathers, as many as 62% have a full time job, compared to only 45.5% of working mothers. While slightly more than a quarter of single fathers and mothers work only part-time positions (27.3% and 28.4% respectively), single mothers are fair more likely to be unemployed (26.0%) compared to single fathers (10.7%).

Please note: Any household with someone age 65 or older present was excluded in order to not inflate the number/percentage of families where the householder is a retiree and not working. Hopefully the targeted families examined here are thereby headed largely by working age householders between the ages of 16 and 64.

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