Beyond Unemployment Numbers: Millions Need Underemployment Strategies to Survive New Jobs

Along with the unemployement numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics every month are references to another important measuremment, the "underemployment" rate.

The "underemployed" label is officially applied to the collection of people who are completely unemployed, the people who are working part-time because they can't find full-time work, and the people who are so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work altogether. In the midst of retail recession, that underemployment number is in the millions.

Beyond this official definition of "underemployment," though, there is a significant number of people who, after having their careers interrupted by recessionary layoffs, are now working in jobs for which they are overqualified and overeducated. Uncounted, unlabeled, and unacknowledged, this can be the most depressing group of all. This growing number of actively "underemployed" people are now wondering how they will ever find their way back to a career path that makes sense in an industry they care about.

I was recently helping a client fill a newly created administrative position. It was a basic, entry level position paying a basic hourly wage, with the hope of a small performance bonus. A single Craig's List posting yielded dozens of replies, and we quickly found a candidate who was extremely overqualified, but seemingly eager to fill the position.

Christy turned out to be a textbook case study in how to manage underemployment. She moved into her new position with ease, she listened, she learned, and she quickly got up to speed with performing her duties, no matter how unchallenging they were.

Rather than flaunting her experience and taking a know-it-all stance, Christy offered ideas based on her own past successes with diplomacy. With her peers she offered support instead of supervision, even though she was well qualified to manage them all. She quickly established herself as a positive and valuable member of the team.

Beyond what she did, it's what Christy didn't do that helped her quickly transcend her entry level status. She didn't complain, she didn't act superior, she didn't try to assert authority she wasn't given, and if she felt she was above any of the tasks she was performing, she didn't show it.

After just six weeks, meetings were happening to figure out how to create a position and a respectable wage to keep Christy around. Once Christy got in the door, she gave everyone a reason to want to keep her at the party.

For the 8 million people officially labeled as "underemployed," the millions more who are overqualified in their current jobs, and the additional numbers who will find themselves accepting positions they never thought they would be willing to take, some good solid underemployment strategies like Christy practiced will be essential. As Christy demonstrated, when you bring your "A" game to a "B" job, you can change your own fate and forge yourself a new path from the involuntary u-turn in your career.

Your new employer and co-workers might be sympathetic to your underemployment challenge, but they will have little patience if you have a resentful, superior, or self-indulgent attitude about it. If you can't find a way to be grateful for your job, whatever it is, then you might need to be unemployed for a little bit longer. Rather than shortchange yourself and your new employer, it would be better for you to go back to the unemployment office until the best version of yourself is ready to work.