> If you get a job at McDonald's while having a civil engineering degree

That would be under_employment (vs un_employment).

Un_employment refers to people actively seeking work but unable to find it, while under_employment encompasses individuals who are working but not fully utilizing their skills or working fewer hours than they would like

Bad term. If I get employed as a quantitative trader on Jane Street after completing a philosophy major am I underemployed because I'm not writing papers on ontology? Why do other people get to say what my "full utilization" is without even knowing me?

Underemployment as "not working as many hours as you'd like" is the standard definition, and that one actually does seem to respect people's interiority.

> Bad term. If I get employed as a quantitative trader on Jane Street after completing a philosophy major am I underemployed because I'm not writing papers on ontology?

No, not by the common definition of underemployment. You're not over-qualified to work at Jane Street and presumably you want to work there.

But it would be worth tracking if you wanted to work in academia and ended up at Jane Street. It's about measuring labor demand vs. supply, because labor supply is difficult to measure over time (because people don't just sit forever waiting for a job in their field to open).

> Underemployment as "not working as many hours as you'd like" is the standard definition

These are related concepts and tracked for similar reasons. You're "not working as many hours as you'd like at a job you're qualified for and would like to have". The number of hours you're working at that desired job is 0, and you're replacing it with some undesired job instead.

I maintain it is patently silly to use any definition of underemployment that can expand to include a full-time quantitative trader on Jane Street, even theoretically, but I respect your commitment to the bit.

It depends if you want to be a philosopher or not. The surveys do actually ask this question, see questions #93-95 here for example: http://gpiatlantic.org/pdf/communitygpi/communitypart2b.pdf

(I think you are right to ask if a survey can accurately capture "underemployment", there are many problems with the definition and how to capture the right information to measure it.)

You're darn right I am right to question it. These questions only leave me further convinced this is a bad term.

""" 93. Would you rather have a job more closely related to your education, training and experience?

94. Considering your education, training and experience, do you feel that you are overqualified for your current job?

95. Considering your education, training and experience, do you feel that you have been overqualified for most of your jobs? """

93 is not a question I suspect most people answer faithfully. Because most people with tertiary education could probably find such a job - but it would be at a substantial pay cut. Yet the angle of compensation is nowhere to be found in the question itself.

94 is subject to the same bias that makes 90% of people think they're in the top 50% of driving, parenting, lovemaking and/or karaoke.

95 has that same issue, but also brings in a narcissistic wound aspect to it. No, of course you're better than all of those hams, shams, and japeths who you worked with/under/over through the years.

If you want to get technical and read the small print, in this study "the underemployment rate is defined as the share of graduates working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree"

Since most people working at Jane Street have a college degree, you would not be considered 'underemployed' in this particular study.

These numbers are all hard to measure. I only more or less worked in my engineering field of study (not CS) for 3 years but, other than going back to grad school for 2, was never underemployed by any serious definition of the term.