Underemployment – the Labour Market Challenge

Abstract

It is important to conduct the analysis of the situation of underemployment in the Polish labor market. The purpose of this paper is to present the essence of underemployment and whether one can observe a growing number of underemployed. In the first part of the article, the notion of underemployment and its main features in light of the literature are defined. Then, an attempt is made to define the scope of underemployment focusing on the EU and Polish labor markets (the article is based on available Eurostat statistics). Research pilot studies on underemployment have been conducted in the West Pomeranian Voivodship. The conclusions stemming from the analysis are included in the final part of the article, and they describe the relatively bad situation of underemployment in the Polish labor market. Therefore, it can be concluded that there are two aspects to the Polish labor market, as there are so-called “good” workplaces and substandard workplaces.