170,000 officially underemployed


Oregon has about 170,000 underemployed workers who involuntarily work only part-time.

Share this article!

Oregon has about 170,000 underemployed workers who involuntarily work only part-time.

The underemployed often cannot pay their bills, yet are not counted in unemployment numbers.

Nationally, their numbers “roughly doubled” during the recession, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, which is based in Washington, D.C.

In 2007, there were 4.4 million involuntary part-timers, and by December 2010 the number had grown to 8.9 million, she said.

Oregon’s group of involuntary part-timers grew about 3 percent faster than the rate in the rest of the country over the past six years, according to the state Employment Department. Their inability to find full-time work is a drag on the state’s per capita earnings, bringing the figure down to $36,125 — 9 percent lower than the national per capita income, according to an Employment Department report.

Read more at StatesmanJournal.com.

{biztweet}underemployed{/biztweet}