RJ and Makay

Factory overtime is on the rise, according to the Labor Department, and that's great news for a lot of Americans who've had to settle for part-time work when they wanted to be full-time. On average, factory workers put in 4.2 hours of overtime in February, the most since July 2007.

“There's only so much overtime you can make your workers work before you have to add [employees],” says John Canally, an economic strategist at LPL Financial. Some of the latest economic data points to further employment gains in manufacturing in coming months, he adds.