Underemployment occurs when an individual is employed in a position inferior to that which would correspond to his or her training.
Underemployment is the action and effect of underemployment . This verb refers, according to the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) , to employing someone in a position lower than that which would correspond to them according to their capacity .
Underemployment can arise due to various factors, although it is usually considered a phenomenon installed in society when the labor market presents distortions and employment conditions are precarious. As a consequence, the affected workers are unable to access the positions they should occupy according to their training and experience and end up accepting to work in other positions that imply lower remuneration and prestige.
For example: an engineer cannot find a company that allows him to practice his profession and ends up accepting a sales position that only requires a high school diploma. This is a clear case of underemployment, since the individual is qualified to perform a more complex job function. Underemployment not only has consequences for the engineer, but also for people without university training who could occupy the position of salesperson but who cannot compete against someone with an engineering degree.
Underemployment and the labor system
Analyzed from a strict point of view, underemployment is a worrying and involuntary situation, which reveals the fragile organization of the labor system and the lack of foresight and planning in a country. If there are 400 positions available for a given profession, one that depends almost exclusively on one entity to be practiced, then the number of graduates should not excessively exceed the vacancies.
How can you prohibit a person from studying what they want, from pursuing their vocation ? Surely it would not be a very democratic measure, but there are fair ways to limit the number of professionals in each field. There are countries in which the grade point average of secondary studies is taken into account to determine whether or not an individual is suitable to pursue the career they have chosen. As cold but as organized as it seems, a table details, for example, the minimum score to aspire to be a doctor.
Then there can be debates about the right to a second chance that a person who has not shined in high school deserves; On the other hand, there are many people who are happy to know that their doctors are academically brilliant people. To both sides' credit, many brilliant minds have not obtained good grades in their studies and many geniuses have been feared despots and abusers (see Adolf Hitler ).
Underemployment is a consequence of a distorted or fragile labor market.
A recurring phenomenon
Underemployment is undoubtedly a regrettable phenomenon for many professionals who dedicated years of their lives to studying a career and personal development. In an overpopulated world with too many college students pouring coffee , the largest companies have at their disposal a ruthless arsenal of requirements for their staff expansion campaigns: they can demand the wildest combinations of experience and training, trusting that they will find the perfect employee ; The reality, however, is usually very different.
Among the people who fail a job interview because they do not meet an "impossible" series of requirements, there are those who have enough intuition and experience to compensate for their weaknesses. Likewise, many of the lucky ones have nothing but degrees to their credit, and have never put their knowledge into practice.
Another meaning of the term underemployment
Another use of the notion of underemployment is linked to people who work irregularly or who only work a small number of hours per week. A street vendor who spends only two hours a day at his job is considered underemployed.
In summary, underemployment appears when an employed individual does not reach a level of full employment . This last concept, for its part, is given by the existence of work for all the people who seek it and by the productivity of said work.