This project will examine the topic of hours-based underemployment, focusing specifically on involuntary part time work. Habr’s motivating question for this project focuses on the relationship between labor productivity and underemployment in the US labor market, particularly focusing on how companies in different industries use underemployment to increase productivity, as well as on the trends in underemployment following the COVID-19 pandemic. Her project will use both quantitative and qualitative data sources to answer these questions, including administrating data from CPS and BEA and scheduling data from HR company HomeBase in order to examine trends in underemployment across industries and time. Habr will also use interviews with managers about scheduling to supplement this understanding and understand how firms make decisions about hours and employment. Her contribution will bring a political economic lens that combines sociological focus on bad jobs with the labor economic focus on measuring underemployment.
