What Part of Well Being Are We Not Getting? Associations of Underemployment with Health, Well-Being, and Work-Family Outcomes after the Pandemic

Underemployment is not only a constraint on labor supply and an indicator of labor underutilization in labor markets, but is a threat to economic insecurity, well-being and equity, particularly to the extent it is disproportionately experienced by lower-wage service sector and workers of color. Being employed less than 35 hours, but with involuntarily reduced or inadequate hours, has associations not only with higher risks of poverty (Glauber, 2013), but also with poorer general health and mental health (Angrave & Charlwood, 2015; Bassanini & Caroli, 2015; De Moortel et al., 2020). However, there is a research gap on the effects of underemployment on various health and well-being outcomes in the US, particularly after the pandemic. Therefore, we examine 1) the associations of underemployment with aspects of workers’ health and well-being—in contrast to both full-time and voluntary part-time work—and 2) whether these adverse well-being associations of underemployment are more pronounced for vulnerable workers, such as minority workers, female workers, or hourly workers.

Data is drawn from the two waves of Qualtrics survey, recruiting 1200 U.S. workers of Wave 1 between April to July 2023 and 800 US workers of Wave 2 between Dec. 2023 to March. 2024. We over-sampled part-time workers in order to explore their change in employment status over time. We utilized three measures of underemployment workers, including 1) part-time workers due to slack work or unable to find a full-time position (also called involuntary part-time work, IVPT), consistent with the CPS definition; 2) part-time workers who prefer to work more hours to earn more money; and 3) part-time workers who prefer to a full-time position. Health indicators include self-rated health and emotional distress. Well-being measures include life satisfaction, job happiness, job satisfaction, job stress, and work-life conflict. We employed multivariate regression analyses to answer suggested research questions.

Preliminary findings from Wave 1 show that 9 to 17% of workers were underemployed. Underemployed workers from all three definitions reported higher emotional problems than full-time workers. IVPT workers reported lower health status than full-time workers, and part-time workers who prefer a full-time job reported lower job happiness than full-time workers. In particular, the well-being gap between IVPT workers and voluntary part-time (VPT) workers was large; VPT workers consistently showed higher job happiness and life and job satisfaction. We also found the moderating effect of race and a worker’s hourly/salary status. IVPT employment was detrimental to workers’ health, life satisfaction, and job happiness, particularly for non-white workers and hourly workers. The future analysis will be conducted to explore how the change in work status (e.g., IVPT to full-time) is associated with improved or diminished well-being over time by controlling for unobserved heterogeneity.

Our findings suggest the adverse consequences of underemployment on health and well-being outcomes, particularly for vulnerable workers. Based on the findings, we recommend specific policies that are intended to prevent, curb or ameliorate underemployment and improve the quality of part-time jobs in general, such as Schedules That Work Act and Part-time Worker Bill of Rights.