ALMOST 1.5million new jobs will be created over the next five years - all of them part-time, according to a report today. Meantime, the number of full-time jobs may drop by 10,000.

This, of course, is an underlining of a pattern already well-established - the rise of the pin-money job and the decline of the "real" one.

With it, too, has come the falling-off the male bread-winner role and the increase of the female worker's input into the household economy. But what perhaps is a matter for dispute is whether, as suggested by this report today, the switch to part-time work comes about from "general social preference" or largely because it is the only choice now offered to many job-seekers - and with it those of limited earnings and less security.

The labour market may be being shaped by immutable economic forces, but we think that many people who are having to follow its trend would welcome the availability of more "real" jobs even if less leisure was one of the costs.

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