Number of full-time employees in the U.S. 1990-2016

About This Statistic

This statistic shows the not seasonally adjusted number of full-time employees in the United States from 1990 to 2016. In 2016, about 123.76 million people were employed on a full-time basis.

Employment and salary

The number of full-time employees in the United States has increased by almost 20 million people since 1991. In 1990, there were 98.67 million full-time employees which had increased to 116.31 million employees in 2013. After the recession, the number of full-time employees dropped and part-time employment increased significantly. There were about 26.58 million part-time employees in the country as of July 2015. Full-time employment usually is associated with certain benefits that are otherwise not offered to part-time employees, such as health insurance and annual leave. In the United States, the Affordable Care Act defines a full-time workweek as 30 hours or more. Salary in the United States can vary greatly between ethnicities and gender. The median weekly earnings of a full-time salary worker, was 953 U.S. dollars for the Asian population but only 639 U.S. dollars for the Black or African American population. On average in 2013, female salary workers earned an hourly wage of 12.12 U.S. dollars and males earned an hourly wage of 14 U.S. dollars. Based on a constant value, the wage among salary workers has fluctuated since 1979 where employees earned a median of 13.29 U.S. dollars and 12.93 U.S. dollars in 2013. Minimum wage in the United States was established at 7.25 U.S. dollars per hour as of 2009.