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Underemployment

Underemployment refers to employment that is inadequate, inferior, or of low quality, relative to some standard. Researchers—mostly economists, industrial-organizational psychologists, and sociologists—agree that there are several distinct types of underemployment, although there is less agreement on exactly what counts as underemployment or how many types there are. Nevertheless, the following experiences are regularly classified as underemployment:

Overqualification: These workers possess surplus (a) formal education, (b) work experience, and/or (c) knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), relative to the job demands or requirements.

Involuntary Part-Time and/or Temporary Employment: These workers are employed in part-time and/or temporary jobs because they cannot find full-time and/or permanent positions.

Underpayment: The worker's wages are significantly less than a certain standard. Standards include (a) the worker's wages from a previous job, (b) typical wages for someone with the worker's educational background, and (c) a livable wage.

Other types of work experiences occasionally identified as underemployment include unemployment, intermittent (un)employment (workers who either have experienced recent periods of both employment and unemployment or work on jobs that are seasonal or otherwise sporadic), sub-employment (workers who are not currently employed and have ceased the job search process because they do not believe that jobs are available), involuntary educational mismatch (workers employed in a field outside their area of education), status underemployment (workers who receive less occupational prestige from their jobs than expected based upon their background), and jobs providing few opportunities for skill development.

Involuntary Mismatch

In general, a key prerequisite for defining a work situation as underemployment is that it be involuntary. For example, an individual who moves from full-time work to part-time work as part of a transition to retirement is not underemployed, whereas someone who would prefer a full-time job but can only find a part-time job is underemployed. This is an important distinction, as researchers have begun to show that employees who voluntarily choose a given work situation (e.g., part-time work) experience more positive job attitudes than employees who find themselves in the same work situation despite preferring something more (e.g., full-time work).

Each type of underemployment, by definition, represents a discrepancy between the actual work situation and an alternative situation that is preferred by the employee. Recognizing this, researchers are beginning to utilize person-job fit and related models to frame underemployment research and generate hypotheses. In essence, each type of underemployment can be viewed as an instance of poor person-job fit. For example, overqualification reflects poor fit between worker abilities and job demands, whereas underpayment reflects poor fit between worker needs and job supplies.

Measurement

Researchers may measure underemployment by using either personnel data or self-report measures. For example, overqualification may be assessed by comparing one's level of education and experience (as stated on a resume or job application) to a job description. Alternatively, the employee could be asked to complete a questionnaire with items designed to tap perceptions of overqualification. In addition to these strategies, some researchers measure underemployment by culling data from databases containing labor statistics, such as the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Importantly, self-report measures have the advantage of accounting for whether one's current work situation is voluntary or involuntary. Unfortunately, measurement of underemployment is currently idiosyncratic to each research project; no valid self-report measures have yet gained widespread use.

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