All Articles Tagged "underemployment"
When Your Job is a Joke: 5 Ways to Combat Underemployment
Source: shutterstock
Are you underemployed? If so, you’re not alone.
Recently, the Associated Press reported “1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed”.
“Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans…About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years.”
Most would agree being underemployed is better than being jobless, but that doesn’t mean individuals who are underemployed have it easy.
While looking for the job we want, some of us have realized it is necessary to take any job we can get as long as it stops the slow drain of available funds in our checking accounts. However, underemployment doesn’t have to be a permanent situation. The following slides will show you five ways to combat being underemployed.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Working Hard But Needing Hours
(Huffington Post) — A little over two years ago, Floyd Kelly, then an associate at Walmart, transferred from one company store in Washington State to another. Although Kelly had worked full-time for years, he says that after the switch his hours dropped to part-time. Ever since then, he’s been trying desperately to claw his way back to a 40-hour week. “I’ve been trying to transfer into other full-time positions for over two years now,” says Kelly, who now works at Sam’s Club, which is owned by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. “But everywhere I’ve contacted, they told me all they have is part-time.” For Kelly and other retail workers like him, the difference between full-time and part-time in this economy is the difference between eking by and slowly going under. In Kelly’s case, the reduced workweek means a paycheck that’s about two-thirds of what it used to be. It means a less reliable schedule, no sick days and no vacation days. And it means keeping roommates at age 50, just so he can cover rent.
6 Reasons Why African-Americans Should Care About the Debt Ceiling
The current news cycle has been inundated with the tense struggle between the White House and Congressional Republicans and Democrats. Whether on prime time news or in major newspapers, commentaries appear to focus on which side is right and who really is at fault for the present situation in which the country finds itself relative to debt.
President Obama has tried his best to work with House Speaker John Boehner and Congressional Republicans, and Vice President Joe Biden has been leading a bipartisan committee for months to establish a proposal to reduce the current deficit while attempting to satisfy both aisles and chambers of Congress. Unfortunately, due to political posturing and an unwillingness to bypass pride for the benefit of the country, no deal has yet to be reached on arguably the most important decision of our era.
Because of the general perception that the debt ceiling issue is strictly confined to the geographical dimensions of the nation’s capital and Wall Street, there a plethora of individuals who believe that the failure to raise the debt limit for the country will not affect everyday citizens. To be sure, there will be adverse implications for the nation if Congress is unable to reach a compromise before recessing on August 5, which is fast approaching.
Below are six ways in which the failure to raise the debt ceiling would trickle down and negatively affect everyday folks. For many African-Americans, who have and continue to suffer significantly from the Great Recession in terms of unemployment, underemployment and personal finances, these ramifications could be extremely damaging.
Programs designed to help the poor such as HUD, temporary welfare, food stamps and WIC would likely lose funding.
One of the primary consequences that would assuredly take place if the Treasury is unable to pay all of its bills is that it would be forced to prioritize its payments. Bipartisan economists agree that the Treasury’s highest priorities would be to ensure that it pays interest on treasury securities, social security benefits, Medicare/Medicaid, defense vendor payments and unemployment insurance benefits.
Unfortunately, continual funding for programs such as food stamps (SNAP), Woman, Infants and Children (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Health and Human Services grants and housing assistance for the poor would likely become impossible pretty quickly. These aforementioned programs are not only important for the public-at-large but very essential for a large number of African-Americans.
Education programs such as Pell grants and special education state grants IRS refunds, veterans’ affairs and military active duty pay would likely lose funding.
Again, if the Treasury is forced to “prioritize” its payments, then continual funding for programs such as military active duty pay, veterans’ affairs, certain Department of Education programs such as Pell grants and special education state grants and IRS refunds, would likely become impossible pretty quickly. Again, these aforementioned programs are not only essential for individuals across the board but very important for a substantial number of African-Americans.
New Grads Face Sour Job Prospects
(New York Times) — The individual stories are familiar. The chemistry major tending bar. The classics major answering phones. The Italian studies major sweeping aisles at Wal-Mart. Now evidence is emerging that the damage wrought by the sour economy is more widespread than just a few careers led astray or postponed. Even for college graduates — the people who were most protected from the slings and arrows of recession — the outlook is rather bleak. Employment rates for new college graduates have fallen sharply in the last two years, as have starting salaries for those who can find work. What’s more, only half of the jobs landed by these new graduates even require a college degree, reviving debates about whether higher education is “worth it” after all. “I have friends with the same degree as me, from a worse school, but because of who they knew or when they happened to graduate, they’re in much better jobs,” said Kyle Bishop, 23, a 2009 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh who has spent the last two years waiting tables, delivering beer, working at a bookstore and entering data. “It’s more about luck than anything else.”
Underemployed? File for Benefits
(Bankrate) — If you’ve been fired or laid off, there’s state unemployment insurance to fall back on. If you’re injured on the job, there’s workers’ compensation, or even private disability insurance if you have a policy. But what if you are one of the millions of Americans — nearly one in five of us (18.6 percent) according to the latest Gallup numbers — who are underemployed, defined as still drawing income from reduced hours or part-time work? Depending on where you live, you may qualify for partial underemployment or work-share benefits, little-known state programs that can help bridge the gap between what you’re making now and what you used to make.
Overqualified? Yes, but Happy to Have a Job
(NY Times) Don Carroll, a former financial analyst with a master’s degree in business administration from a top university, was clearly overqualified for the job running the claims department for Cartwright International, a small, family-owned moving company here south of Kansas City.
Overqualified? Yes, but Happy to Have a Job
(NY Times) Don Carroll, a former financial analyst with a master’s degree in business administration from a top university, was clearly overqualified for the job running the claims department for Cartwright International, a small, family-owned moving company here south of Kansas City.
