Underemployment

Underemployment – when people are employed in some way that is insufficient, such as being overqualified or working part-time when one desires full-time employment – is a challenge faced by all industrialized nations and their organizations and individuals. Just like unemployment, some level of underemployment exists even in the best of times, but it becomes more pervasive when the job market is weak. Given the current economic climate in North America and abroad, researchers and scholars in various disciplines (psychology, business, sociology, economics) are becoming more interested in investigating the effects of underemployment and identifying possible practical solutions. Underemployment synthesizes the current understanding of the phenomenon by bringing together scholars with diverse perspectives and expertise with the aim of informing and guiding the next generation of underemployment research.

This manual is based on the international standards adopted by the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians in October 1982. One of its main objectives is to explain the international concepts and definitions in more detail than in the 1982 conference resolution.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Measuring Underemployment: Demographic Indicators for the United States discusses the Labor Utilization Framework of Hauser and Sullivan, which is a measurement scheme that posits the existence of three dimensions, or forms, of underemployment— time, income, and skill-utilization. This book describes the conceptual groundwork, operational measurement, and implications of the Labor Utilization Framework on the way the labor force aggregates. The essential elements of the socio-demographic theory of the labor force with the logical unity provided by both the Labor Utilization Framework and the specific methodologies adopted for its analysis are also elaborated. This text likewise covers the methods for latent structure analysis and cohort analysis, including the theory of frictional underemployment; “class structure governing the distribution of labor market rewards; tempo of social change in the labor force; “productive value of a population; and “true dependency on productive labor. This publication is a good source for students and researchers concerned with different labor force topics that can be plausibly studied from the viewpoint of the Hauser-Sullivan framework.