Since 1998, the number of mothers working part-time jobs who also cared for children rose 16 percent to reach 69 percent in 2008.

Meanwhile just five percent of fathers with children work part-time jobs – 10 times less than their female counterparts. Nonetheless, the male numbers grew by three percent in the last decade.

More women without children – or who have grown children no longer living at home – are also working part-time jobs, Destatis found. Their numbers rose six percent to reach 36 percent in 2008. Men without children working part-time also went up slightly by four percentage points to reach nine percent.

Expert for the Halle institute for Economic Research Ulrich Brautzsch told daily Die Welt on Wednesday that the study confirms the job market is changing, adding that the economic crisis has spurred an employer preference for part-time workers.

“Employers are breaking away from full-time workers and keeping the more flexibly deployable part-time forces or splitting full-time positions into part-time jobs,” Brautzsch told the paper.

This has particularly been the case in the economically depressed former communist eastern half of Germany, where many women have had to take part-time positions unwillingly, he said.

But because many women’s jobs are in the service industry, they are less likely to lose them in a crisis. Men, on the other hand, are often employed in “export dependent“ jobs more susceptible to layoffs in a recession, he said.