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Underemployed means employed only part-time when one wants to be working full-time.

Someone who’s underemployed has a job and wants to be working more but can’t, often due to a lack of available jobs.

The term is often used in the same context as unemployed, which means not employed at all. Both underemployed and unemployed are sometimes used to refer to such people collectively, as in These programs are intended to help the unemployed and underemployed.��

Less commonly, underemployed refers not to working less than desired but to not being used to one’s full potential or abilities. People who are overqualified for a job sometimes end up underemployed in this way.

The state of being underemployed is underemployment.

The verb employ also means to use, and underemployed can be used to describe something that’s not used as much as it should be, as in an underemployed strategy. Synonyms for this sense of the word are underused and underutilized.

Example: The unemployment rate can be misleading if it doesn’t take into account the many people who are underemployed.

The first records of the word underemployed come from the early 1900s. Its base word, employ, ultimately derives from the Latin ����������������, meaning “to engage” (the word engage is sometimes used to mean “to hire” or “to employ”).

When workers can’t find full-time employment, they often try to string together several part-time, freelance, or temporary gigs to try to make ends meet. But in many cases, these jobs still don’t add up to full-time work, and workers are still underemployed.

The opposite of being underemployed is being overemployed, which is an informal term to describe someone who’s overworked in their full-time job or who has more work than they can handle.

What are some other forms related to underemployed?

• underemployment (noun)
• employed (adjective)

What are some words that share a root or word element with underemployed?��

• unemployed
• unemployment
• employ
• employer
• employee

What are some words that often get used in discussing underemployed?

• job
• gig economy
• freelance
• part-time
• work
• worker

Being underemployed is considered negative, but the term itself is typically used in a neutral way.

Hong Kong April jobs report was terrible… 😥

# of unemployed +40k people
# of underemployed +36k people

% Change from March to April:
Labor Force -0.6%
Employed -1.7%
Unemployed +24.8%
Underemployed +43.8%

— David Ingles (@DavidInglesTV)

Women who have worked hard to build careers, go to school, raise kids. Women who have made sacrifices to have kids. Women struggling with infertility, mental health, caring for a loved one. Women who are underemployed or overworked. The list is long.

I see you.

— Neha Chugh (@nehachughlaw)

The “real” unemployment rate, which includes workers not looking for jobs and the underemployed, surged to 22.8%.

— Gregory Mannarino (@GregMannarino)

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Is underemployed used correctly in the following sentence?

I’ve been feeling underemployed, so I’m going to ask my boss for some more challenging projects.