adjective
Usage
What does underemployed mean? Underemployed means employed only part-time when one wants to be working full-time. Someone who’s underemployed has a job and wants to be working more but can’t, often due to a lack of available jobs. The term is often used in the same context as unemployed, which means not employed at all. Both underemployed and unemployed are sometimes used to refer to such people collectively, as in These programs are intended to help the unemployed and underemployed. Less commonly, underemployed refers not to working less than desired but to not being used to one’s full potential or abilities. People who are overqualified for a job sometimes end up underemployed in this way. The state of being underemployed is underemployment. The verb employ also means to use, and underemployed can be used to describe something that’s not used as much as it should be, as in an underemployed strategy. Synonyms for this sense of the word are underused and underutilized. Example: The unemployment rate can be misleading if it doesn’t take into account the many people who are underemployed.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of underemployed
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The war is a distant drumbeat, its threat ever audible to Steele’s underemployed, eminently draftable characters from 9,000 miles away.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 8, 2026
Many refugees arrive with professional experience and degrees but end up unemployed or underemployed in survival-wage jobs to make ends meet.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025
And, as they are also often unemployed or underemployed following displacement, many suffer a significant drop in income.
From Salon • Dec. 2, 2024
I recently spent six months selling solar door-to-door, partly to learn more about the industry, partly out of desperation as an underemployed writer.
From Slate • Nov. 7, 2024
Half the young men of that age group are either unemployed or underemployed.
From "Monster" by Walter Dean Myers
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
