This book reports a decade of research on underemployment. Our present approach grew out of an earlier program of research that focused narrowly on job loss and its psychological and physical health costs. A century of unemployment studies had corroborated the conventional wisdom that job loss could harm well-being, particularly the mental health of dislocated workers and their immediate family members. But the suspicion remained that some forms of employment might also carry social costs that were being ignored.

Our initial efforts to study the consequences of various forms of underemployment were frankly exploratory. But positive findings from the study of one outcome stimulated further research on other outcomes. Findings of the adverse effects of underemployment on self-esteem among school leavers invited follow-up analyses of alcohol abuse, depression, and birthweight. Parallel findings for these different indicators appeared across different survey years, representing different life stages of the respondents and different economic environments in which they worked or sought jobs. The data seemed to insist that not only unemployment but also inadequate employment had a strong and pervasive connection to all of the outcome measures that were available for our study.

Those of us who conduct research on employment status have had to recognize the importance of the prevailing economic climate. It defines the opportunity structure that determines the risks of individual job change, both good and bad. It also provides the environment for comparison and self-assessment in which individuals judge their relative well-being and future prospects.