Involuntary part-time work refers to workers who want full-time jobs but can only find part-time work due to a lack of opportunities or services like childcare. Relatedly, underemployment includes involuntary part-time workers who want standard full-time hours but are limited to part-time schedules. Underemployment is more common during economic downturns when labor markets do not adjust through changing wages and instead ration jobs non-wage based.

1. 2. "Involuntary part-time" work, where workers who could (and would like to) be working for a full work-week can only
find part-time work. By extension, the term is also used in regional planning to describe regions where economic
activity rates are unusually low, due to a lack of job opportunities, training opportunities, or due to a lack of services
such as childcare and public transportation .
A related kind of underemployment refers to "involuntary part-time" workers. These are workers who could (and
would like to) be working for the standard work-week (typically full-time employment means 40 hours per week in the
United States ) who can only find part-time work. Underemployment is more prevalent during times of economic
stagnation (during recessions or depressions ). Obviously, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, many of those
who were not unemployed were underemployed. These kinds of underemployment arise because labor markets
typically do not " clear " using wage adjustment. Instead, there is non-wage rationing of jobs.