Manager keeps saying he's over worked but not giving me much to do

It's difficult to discount the possibility that the owner just doesn't have enough time and energy to deal with you and hand over the tasks.

Complaining about being overworked, and also not embracing the additional (over)work of arranging to delegate tasks, are logically compatible behaviours.

Also am I right in understanding you're not really a "contractor", but simply a young and inexperienced member of staff with casual hours? Obviously, if the owner is not generally paying for your waiting time or availability, then he has little financial incentive to buckle down and facilitate your tasks when he's not ready to do so.

It's also quite common in any IT work that dividing a job up between two or more people carries significant ongoing overheads, in terms of coordinating and communicating.

It's not always just a one-time showing someone what to do, but having to design a new and unfamiliar interaction which keeps people on the same page and avoids stepping on feet, and in some cases developing a vocabulary to discuss things that may never previously have had to be discussed.

It may not be obvious to the owner how to delegate his work in a manner that will save him time, and it may not be obvious to you what those perceived difficulties are, nor obvious to him how he explains a difficulty that he knows intuitively from being accustomed to his work.

If your overall level of pay is not what you expect, then you can either take more part-time hours elsewhere, or you can have a conversation with the owner about what level of hours and pay are the minimum necessary to keep you on board, without which you will have to seek employment elsewhere.

He basically made his own ticketing system which has several outstanding tickets. I tried to go through them but most I can't do by myself and when I ask for help he just says don't worry about it for now.

You already mentioned the crucial part here yourself. Most of the tickets you can't do by yourself. You are trying to help your boss, but end up needing help and therefor adding more work to your boss. It is likely that your boss (rightfully so or not), thinks that delegating any of the tasks to you won't make their life easier in the short term.

What you can do is to proactively find things that will make your boss life easier, without them needing to be involved. If there is a ticket and you can already some prep-work, maybe you can do the prep work. Maybe you can find other resources to help your with tickets you are not 100% able to do yourself (like a senior colleague in a different department).

Don't ask for permission, but let your manager know: "Hey I am currently doing X. My plan is to do Y later and will proceed to do Z if I don't here anything from you." The important part is to keep at concise doesn't add any work or even a question to your manager.

I don't know your manager, there is a chance that this will work and your manager is happy about anything taken from their plate, or there is a chance that it won't and they are more of the controlling kind. If they are reluctant and worried about you not doing the job as good as they wood, you can focus on the jobs with lower importance that they likely would not get to anyways. A job done by a less experienced worker in most cases is better than a job not done.

I see 3 options:

• if money and benefits are acceptable for you, just sit and relax;
• do some effort to learn to implement those outstanding tickets by yourself, without help; alternatively, implement of those tickets only the parts that you know how to implement - leave the rest for later, or for someone else; to be politically correct, ask the manager to let you work on those tickets as on-the-job training;
• polish and share your CV.

Good answers already, my addition is a strategy that may be useful to be both more productive and get more hours.

If possible do some networking and marketing. Try to generate more work for the company. Particularly work that you yourself can handle.

There is a risk that people including your boss may think you're drumming up side work for yourself... but at the end of the day that could also pan out. Finding more work is therefore a win win situation for you if done correctly.

There are several possibilities here.

The most likely is that he is just not a very good manager. Maybe he's good at whatever IT your company does, but he's not good at MANAGING. He doesn't know how to determine what a subordinate is capable of, assign them tasks, and process the results. And train them to do the things they don't know how to do now. This is a common problem for many managers who are new to the job.

There's a trap that many managers fall in to: I can do this job better and faster, so I'll just do it myself. Maybe true, but then you end up doing all the work while your subordinates sit around doing nothing.

(Suddenly reminds me: An older man was on some TV talk show, and talked proudly of his new grandson. The host said, "Why are people congratulating you? You did your part over 20 years ago." The man replied, "A good administrator learns to delegate responsibility.")

The worst case is that he is disappointed in your performance and doesn't trust you to do the work.