Time math
How many hours is part time?
Part time is fewer than 35 hours a week by one official line, and fewer than 30 by another. The 35-hour line is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for its jobs statistics. The 30-hour line is from the US health coverage law (HealthCare.gov). There is no single legal number for part time. Federal wage law does not set one, so each employer draws its own line.
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Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
Who draws the line
How many hours is considered part time?
Part-time hours in the United States depend on who is counting. The two federal lines, at 35 hours a week and at 30, were each written for one purpose. Neither decides whether your own job is part time. Your employer generally decides that.
Each line in the table is linked to the official page that sets it. This page covers the United States only. It is information, not legal advice.
| Who | Part time is | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Bureau of Labor StatisticsThe jobs statistics | Fewer than 35 hours usually worked in a week | Counting part-time workers in the jobs statistics |
| HealthCare.govThe health coverage law | Fewer than 30 hours a week on average | The Affordable Care Act’s rules on employer health coverage |
| Department of LaborWages and overtime | No number. The wage law does not address part-time work | The Fair Labor Standards Act: minimum wage and overtime pay |
| Your employerIts own policy | Its own line, at whatever number of hours it chooses | Its own policy on pay and benefits |
The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts the people in its jobs survey by the hours they usually work in a week, with all of their jobs added together. Under 35 hours is part time. Its own page says the definitions are for statistics only and “are not legal definitions.”
The health coverage law is the Affordable Care Act. The IRS, the tax agency, counts an employee as full time at an average of 30 hours of service a week, or 130 in a month. HealthCare.gov, the government’s health insurance site, says part-time employees average less than 30 hours a week. So a 32-hour week is part time in the jobs statistics and full time under this law.
The Department of Labor enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law behind the minimum wage and overtime pay. Its page says the Act “does not address part-time employment.”
At work
Who decides whether a job is part time?
An employer generally decides whether a job is part time, because federal wage law gives no number (the Department of Labor says so). Two employers that publish their own rules show how far apart the lines can be.
- The federal government, for its own career staff: part time is 16 to 32 hours a week (the Office of Personnel Management).
- Sandia National Laboratories: a part-time schedule is 20 to 36 hours a week.
The second range ends at 36 hours, above the 35 at which the jobs statistics start counting full time. So the same week can be part time at work and full time in the statistics. The full-time side of each rule is on how many hours is full time.
The math
How many hours a month and a year is part time?
A part-time week turns into a year when you multiply it by 52, the whole weeks in a year. Divide the year by 12 months and you have an average month. Take a week of 20 hours:
- a year: 20 × 52 = 1,040 hours
- a month: 1,040 ÷ 12 = 86.7 hours
| Hours a week | A month | A year |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hoursTwo five-hour shifts | 43.3 | 520 |
| 20 hoursFive four-hour days | 86.7 | 1,040 |
| 24 hoursThree eight-hour days | 104 | 1,248 |
| 29 hoursJust under the health coverage line | 125.7 | 1,508 |
| 30 hoursWhere the health coverage law starts full time | 130 | 1,560 |
| 32 hoursThe top of the federal part-time range | 138.7 | 1,664 |
| 34 hoursJust under the jobs statistics line | 147.3 | 1,768 |
The row for 30 hours a week comes to 130 hours a month, which is the monthly figure in the IRS rule. For the working hours in each calendar month, see working hours in a month.
Try it
Add up your own part-time week.
Enter the days you work in a week and the hours you work on each of them. The calculator adds up the week, turns it into a month and a year, and shows which side of each federal line your week is on.
From half an hour to 16 hours a day. A typed number goes to the nearest quarter of an hour. If your days differ in length, enter the average.
Your week against the two lines
The dark bar is your week. Each mark is one of the two lines.
Hours a week
18
3 days × 6 hours, which is 45% of a 40-hour week.
Hours a month
78
Hours a year
936
The year is your week times 52 weeks, and the month is the year divided by 12.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its jobs statistics
Counted as part time, 17 hours under the line.
Part time is fewer than 35 hours usually worked in a week.
The health coverage law
Part time, 12 hours under the line.
Full time starts at an average of 30 hours a week, or 130 a month.
3 days of 6 hours is 18 hours a week, 78 a month and 936 a year.
Your employer’s own policy decides whether your job is part time. This is information, not legal advice. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
What people report
How many hours do part-time workers really work?
Part-time workers in the United States work about 18 hours a week on average. The figure comes from the American Time Use Survey, a yearly study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each person in it goes through the day before, so the result is hours really worked, not hours on a schedule.
In 2025, part-time workers worked on 48% of days, with weekends and days off counted in. On the days they worked, they worked 5.36 hours. Multiply that share by those hours and by the 7 days in a week, and you get the weekly figure. Travel to work is not in it.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey 2025 results, Table 4, released . People age 15 and over, averaged over every day of the year.
Your own hours
How to count the hours your own job takes.
A part-time week on a schedule and a part-time week in real life are often two different numbers. A shift runs late, someone asks you to cover, and a second job brings hours of its own.
Each day you work, write down the time you started and the time you stopped, then add up the week. Doing that every day is called time journaling. For a first look at a whole week, the Where did my week go? calculator turns one usual day into a week of hours.
A schedule shows the hours you were given. It does not show the hours you really worked once a shift ran late or a second job came in.
A good way to keep that count reads your work hours from what you already write or say about your day, with no timesheet to fill in and no timer to start. Most journaling apps record how a shift felt. They leave out the hours, so you cannot add up a week or a month.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: work at each job, the commute, classes, sleep, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. You can set a target for your weekly work hours and see the hours you really worked beside it.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Shift0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Shift this week: 0m
On 3 of 7 days. The gaps are the days without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where the part-time lines come from.
Every line on this page was read on its official page, on the date shown.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey (read ). Concepts and Definitions (CPS).
- HealthCare.gov, the US government’s health insurance site, glossary (read ). Full-time employee (FTE).
- Internal Revenue Service (read ). Identifying full-time employees.
- U.S. Department of Labor (read ). Part-Time Employment.
- U.S. Department of Labor (read ). Full-Time Employment.
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, Office of Personnel Management (read ). 5 CFR Part 340, Other Than Full-Time Career Employment (Part-Time, Seasonal, On-Call, and Intermittent).
- Sandia National Laboratories, Human Resources (read ). Flexible Work Options.
Keep reading.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
- 9/80 work scheduleTwo weeks of full-time hours in nine working days, drawn as a table, with a calendar of your own days off.
- How many hours is full time?The official US definitions side by side, the math for a month and a year, and a calculator for your own week.
- Working hours in a monthThe average full-time month, each month of 2026 with and without holidays, and other weekly schedules.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
Questions
Questions people ask.
How many hours a week is part time?
Part time is fewer than 35 hours a week in the jobs statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and fewer than 30 under the US health coverage law. Neither is a legal definition of a part-time job. Each employer sets its own line.
Is 30 hours a week part time?
In the jobs statistics, 30 hours a week is part time, because full time starts at 35. Under the health coverage law, an average of 30 hours a week counts as full time. At work, your employer’s own policy decides.
Is 32 hours a week part time?
In the jobs statistics, 32 hours a week is part time, because it is under 35. Under the health coverage law the same week counts as full time, because that line is at 30. An employer may call it either one.
What is the fewest hours a part-time job can have?
The federal wage law does not address part-time work, so it gives no lowest number. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts people at work for one to 34 hours in a week as working part time. The federal government sets its own part-time career jobs at 16 to 32 hours a week.
How do I keep track of the hours I work part time?
A notebook is enough: each day you work, write down when you started and when you stopped, and add up the week. It helps if the adding up is done for you, and if a second job goes into the same count. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers counts your work hours from what you write or say about your day, and shows them week by week.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.