Surprise! Underemployment is expensive..

....and hurts the poor disproportionately:

"This $148 billion number is a good lower bound for the annual dollar cost of underemployment on society. The true figure will be higher: as the paper notes,

There are other important losses to these underemployed workers, including less training provided by employers to part-time workers, a lower return to future wages from part-time employment today, and lower future earnings.

Barbara Kiviat has noted this too: it’s possible to do serious harm to your lifetime earnings by taking a part-time or temporary job today rather than staying unemployed and looking for a full-time job. But of course many people have no choice."


http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/02/11/the-massive-cost-of-underemployment/