PayScale, Inc. today announced its report Underemployment: Overeducated, Underpaid, and Underworked. Report also includes new findings about the Skills Gap, based upon employer responses. “Underemployment is a real concern for today’s job seekers as the economic recovery continues to be sluggish,” said Katie Bardaro, Lead Economist, PayScale. “Hiring in many industries remains below expectations and unless you are in certain high-demand fields like technology or health care, well-paying job opportunities are simply not plentiful.” Some highlights from PayScale’s Underemployment study include:
- Being underpaid is the most common reason (80 percent) that workers say they are underemployed.
- 48 percent of female workers say they are underemployed, compared to only 39 percent of male workers.
- Generation Y, defined as workers born between 1982 and 2002, is the generation. with the most underemployed workers (45 percent). However, they are the least likely (77 percent) to say they are simplyunderpaid.
- 12 out of 15 of the most underemployed majors have more female than male graduates.
- Liberal Arts, Psychology, and English Language & Literature are the three majors with the highest percentage of workers who claim to be underemployed because they are not using their education/training. These majors all have more than 70 percent female graduates.
Adds Bardaro: “PayScale has found that more than 40 percent of our surveyed users feel they are underemployed, and the overwhelming majority of them (80 percent) feel it is due to their pay not matching their level of education or training. Underemployment is clearly a broader issue than the strict definition by the Bureau of Labor Statistics which defines it as settling for part-time work when seeking full-time work.”
Photo by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com 
2 Comments
PayScale
We appreciate you sharing our study.
PayScale
Thanks for sharing our underemployment study.