What Does underemploy Mean
Underemployment is the act and consequence of underemployment . This verb refers to hiring a person to carry out tasks in a position lower than the one they should occupy according to their background, capacity and training.
Underemployment usually appears when the labor market faces difficulties and there are not enough positions to employ each person according to their abilities. Let us suppose that a recently graduated architect can not find work in the field of his profession . In this way, he ends up accepting a position in a restaurant and begins to work as a waiter . In this case, the restaurant makes the decision to underemploy the architect, who, in reality, has enough studies to develop another type of work.
The individual who is underemployed receives less income than he should receive according to his studies and experience. Underemployment also affects people with a lower level of training: if an architect works as a waiter, the subject without studies who could occupy that position is likely to be left out of the labor market .
This phenomenon takes place especially with careers and professions that set trends in each era, since most students turn to them and this generates an excess demand in a particular sector, with the consequent lack of supply.
Specialists on the subject of underemployment indicate various ways to solve it, one of them being to improve communication between educational centers and companies to maintain control over the number of people who are trained in each field.
One of the underlying problems that also leads to underemployment is the low demand on the part of certain universities, which award degrees to students who have not made enough effort, or who do not have the necessary level to perform responsibly and effectively in the world of work .
There is also talk of underemployment when an employee works few hours a week or without regularity . This low number of hours worked is reflected in the income received by the worker who also has idle time . The situation reveals a deficiency or imbalance in the labor market, since it does not make efficient use of available resources.
The opposite situation is not positive either, and it is very common in times of crisis, since many people desperately accept any job opportunity, without demanding decent conditions . Contracts that exceed the maximum number of weekly hours allowed by law are not at all unusual, and for this they only declare a fraction of them, also affecting other rights of the employee, such as their contributions.
While in theory it seems hard to believe that a person is willing to accept conditions poor working and unjust, the most common is practice the opposite situation occurs mainly in jobs that do not require college degrees, which adds a load of contempt and discrimination to the problem.
Subemplear the trend is reversed when generated positions needed for each individual to find a job full time and according to their background and expectations.
It is important to note that this term is often confused with 'outsourcing', even though their meanings are very different. When a person or a company subcontracts to someone, they offer them a job that has been awarded to them through a first contract with another entity. Outsourcing is very common in the business environment, and allows large companies to delegate certain responsibilities to third parties , such as cleaning, technical service and even expansion of the campus.