From the course: Economics for Everyone: Job Markets and the Economy

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Underemployment

Underemployment

From the course: Economics for Everyone: Job Markets and the Economy

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Underemployment

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- In the 2001 recession, I had a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, spoke several languages and had many different skills. But despite that fact, I couldn't find a job at my skill level, and I ended up waiting tables. There's a term for this and it's called underemployment. It's when you're working a job that doesn't use all of your abilities, skills, or education, and you're very likely underpaid. There are two different kinds of underemployment. The first is technical underemployment, and it's seen in the monthly employment situation reports from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's a data series, part-time for economic reasons, meaning people want to work full-time, but they can't be full-time because of the economy, so they have to accept part-time work. The experiential kind of underemployment is a more important classification that probably applies to most of us in our lives, as it did to me in 2001. And…

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