The hidden toll of underemployment

COMMENTARY | November 11, 2011

Part-time work and jobs below a person’s skill level may not be as bad as having no job at all but they are serious societal problems in their own right, as Mike Alberti of Remapping Debate reports.

By Mike Alberti
RemappingDebate.org

When policy-makers and pundits (and reporters) talk about the dismal state of the labor market, they generally refer to the unemployment rate, which, by any accounting, remains appallingly high. But focusing exclusively on unemployment has meant that another critical issue has been largely ignored: the enormous increase during the recession in the number of people who are employed but who are forced to work part-time or to hold jobs that are below their skill level. These workers can be broadly thought of as the “underemployed.”

In Europe and many other countries, underemployment is treated as a social problem. In the United States, that is far less true. And most of the limited attention that has been paid to the problem has focused on the economic consequences. Since the recession, however, researchers have begun to take more of an interest in the social and psychological effects of underemployment, and a small body of literature is now growing. In The hidden toll of unemployment, I sought to explore those social and psychological effects. They can be profoundly negative, and not just for the short-term.