Underemployment occurs in nearly every industry, but skills gaps are often industry-specific. How are the two related? CIO.com dug deeper.
A new report from PayScale — called "The War on the American Worker: The Underemployed" — surveyed 962,956 working Americans between March 2014 and March 2016. Forty-six percent said they feel underemployed, which PayScale defines as "having part-time work but wanting to work full-time, or holding a job that doesn't require or utilize your education, experience or training."
Approximately 76 percent of those who feel underemployed said it's because they aren't using their education in their job, and another 24 percent said it's because they want to work full-time but are only working part-time.
Katie Bardaro, a lead economist for PayScale, attributes this to the skills gap, which she said is most prevalent in STEM and IT fields. "Part of the problem is that after the recession, companies could be quite choosy in who they hired," she said, according to CIO.com. "If they needed or wanted ten skills, they could hold out for a person who had exactly those skills and experience. And now there's a reluctance to realize that the market has changed, and that there are wonderful candidates who'd be perfect with just a bit of training and some education."
To tackle this problem, educational institutions will need to offer more opportunities to learn about IT and STEM. Students and job candidates could also enhance skills on their own through online classes and bootcamps.