About The Project

A sociological investigation of underemployment and the lived experiences of underemployed workers

The Project has been awarded a grant of £975k from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC/UKRI) to study underemployment from January 2023 and for a period of three years.

A three-year project

Underemployment occurs when individuals have too few hours of work, are underpaid for their work, or their skills are underused. The project will look at how these different forms of underemployment individually and in combination take effect. The individual and social impact of being underemployed is comparable to being unemployed, particularly when looking at factors like surviving on your income, social stigma, economic anxiety and social connections.

Key knowledge gaps addressed in this project include ways in which social inequalities alter outcomes of underemployment for workers and their families; trends in each indicator of underemployment (hours, wages, skills), their combined effects, and how underemployment affects industrial relations systems, employers and businesses, business models, unions, communities, policymakers and their practices, especially given Covid-19, Brexit and recessions.

Universities

Partners

Databases

Interviews

Research Methods

The study will use longitudinal and mixed methods.

Quantitative methods

About half the team are quantitative experts, who will be analysing the Labour Force Survey, the European Working Conditions Surveys, the UK Household Longitudinal Survey, and the CIPD’s bespoke UK Working Lives Survey.

Qualitative methods

The other half are qualitative researchers, who will be doing interviews with individuals who self-identify as underemployed. The team will also interview other stakeholders such as employers and employer representatives to uncover the benefits and drawbacks of their employment arrangements.