>Marta Russell wrote:
>
>>Can someone clue me in to where to look to see recent Underemployment
>>rates. In 1995 (according to EPI) they hovered at 10.1 percent but
>>what has happened since then?
>
>"Underemployment" is pretty hard to define, much less measure. A
>musician who works as a cabbie may be said to be underemployed, but
>maybe s/he's a bad musician who should stick to driving.
***** College Degrees and Employment in College Jobs
Despite the increase in earnings for college graduates relative to other workers, some researchers have expressed concern about the types of jobs being taken by college graduates. The proportion of college graduates holding jobs that traditionally have been held by workers without a college degree has increased over the past two or three decades (figure 6.2).41 From 1967 through 1990, the rate at which college graduates held "noncollege" jobs increased from 10 to 20 percent. This trend has been interpreted by some as an indication that there is an excess supply of college graduates and that they are being forced to take jobs that do not require a college education (Hecker 1992)....
...The share of the labor force that graduated from college increased from 12 percent to 23 percent over the period shown in figure 6.2. For all the new college graduates to have been employed in jobs traditionally held by college graduates, the number of these jobs would have needed to grow at a similar rate and represent a much larger proportion of all jobs. Such changes in employment did not occur. However, the increase in the number of college graduates indicates that employers found ways to use these graduates productively in "noncollege" jobs.
41 Our treatment of jobs follows Hecker (1992). Jobs traditionally held by college graduates include those in managerial, professional, sales representative, or technician occupations. They are also traditionally employed as police officers, blue-collar worker supervisors, farm managers, or senior-level administrative support workers. Jobs traditionally held by nongraduates include those in retail sales, administrative support, service, precision production, farming, and craft and repair. They are also traditionally employed as operators, fabricators, and laborers.
Hecker, Daniel E. "Reconciling Conflicting Data on Jobs for College Graduates." _Monthly Labor Review_ (July 1992): 3-12.
(U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, _Education & the Economy: An Indicators Report_ NCES 97-269 [March 1997], p. 91, at <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97269.pdf>) *****
Yoshie