ABSTRACT

Many researchers have traditionally focused their attention on the problem of youth unemployment. However the issue of underemployment has emerged, in part because it is seen as a product of the wider changes associated with the movement to a Post-Fordist or a risk society. This chapter suggests that underemployment is indeed a common experience for many people of all ages today. However, data from the early twentieth century also points to the widespread experience of underemployment amongst the workforce. It suggests in fact that underemployment is not unique to late modernity, rather it is a feature of a capitalist, market economy that must periodically reinvent itself. Although various writers such as Beck, Giddens, Bauman, Castells, and Gorz have all examined the significance of waged employment in their research they suggest that the 'centrality of work' over the life-course may now be in decline.