Underemployment Is Growing

The job numbers just released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the national unemployment rate holding steady at 9.7 percent, but it's not reason to celebrate if you look deeper.

The emerging trend is that more people are accepting part-time and temporary work in a desperate effort to get off assistance. Some economists will say the generation of part-time and temporary jobs is a sign of economic recovery which could lead to permanent job growth.

Notice the word "could" because there are no guarantees the United States will boldly emerge from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression.

What we have now is growing underemployment that represents a crossroads -- one way leads toward recovery, the other to further decline. The underemployment rate, as of February, stood at 16.8 percent.

The bureau’s definition of underemployment includes three categories: the unemployed who are still looking for work, the unemployed who have stopped looking for work, and those who are employed part time but would like to be employed full time.


For the history buffs among us, the Depression of the 1930s was a long, slow and painful climb back, speeded up only by our entry into World War II in December 1941. And, like today, the U.S. government propped up many failing institutions, from banks to manufacturing, and created public works jobs.


The U.S. unemployment rate for February 2010 remained at 9.7 percent (same as January) as only 36,000 jobs were shed in the month, according to the bureau. A healthy job market in America means an unemployment rate of about 3.5 percent to 4 percent, economists say.

The number of Americans working part time because they were unable to find full-time jobs increased by 500,000 -- to 8.8 million, a discouraging sign to many, but jobs continued to increase in the temporary help sector, which added nearly 50,000 jobs, according to MediaJobsDaily reporter Rachel Kaufman.

One only needs to scan the Help Wanted classified ads online or in print to see an abundance of part-time and temp jobs across many sectors. The same holds true for many of the larger job board Web sites, such as Indeed and Simply Hired.

Does this portend a slow economic recovery, or does it indicate a more ominous trend with employers filling gaps with second-class workers? Think about this: If employers survived the Great Recession with reduced staffs and expenditures, what incentives do they have to hire new full-time workers?

Perhaps the answer -- no laughs or eye rolling, please -- rests with congressional action to make job creation more enticing to employers.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $35 billion jobs bill Thursday night that will exempt employers from Social Security taxes if they hire unemployed workers. The bill already cleared the Senate but since the House modified the measure, it goes back to the Senate.

The Big Questions: Will it be enough for employers, especially those in the hard-hit sectors such as housing, automotive and publishing, to rethink their staffing requirements? Or will lingering economic anxieties prevent companies from gambling on an uncertain future?

The answers may await in the second quarter of this year (April, May, June). If the pace of economic recovery has not picked up, and it looks like more of February's indicators, the rest of 2010 could be in serious doubt.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.