Underemployed and still looking for work

When you see the unemployment numbers that come out every month you really have to wonder where they get these numbers and how accurate they are. Even if you lost your job and found another one, are you making the same amount of money that you did before or are you working part time at this job and looking for another. If you fall into this category you may be considered unemployed.



Where do the unemployment numbers come from?

Contrary to popular belief, the monthly stats don’t come from the number of people that are actually unemployed. According to the Department of Labor the Government conducts a monthly survey called the Current Population Survey, which is comprised of 60,000 households that are broken down into 2025 geographic areas. The survey participants change on a regular basis.

While it is understandable that the government only takes a sampling of the household, they couldn’t really count everyone unemployed every month, it should also be noted that we really don’t know how many people are unemployed each month.



So what is underemployed?

So what if you want to work full time and can’t find a full time job and settle for a part time job.

Then you are considered underemployed and that seem to be a big problem today that apparently no one can quantify. Another situation of underemployment is when you are vastly overqualified for a position but you take it anyway because you need a job. Once again this is probably happening at an alarming rate in today’s economy.

Unfortunately in this economy the probability of the number of underemployed will continue to increase till things get better, and there is not telling when that will be.



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