American journal of community psychology
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Am J Community Psychol · Sep 2003
Unemployment, underemployment, and mental health: conceptualizing employment status as a continuum.
The economy is one of the most important social environments that affect well-being, and community psychologists have long studied the social costs of one key economic stressor--job loss. But economically inadequate employment has received much less research attention than unemployment in regard to mental health effects. ⋯ Implications of a paradigm shift from a dichotomous perspective (employment vs. unemployment) to a continuum perspective with variations of both unemployment and employment are discussed for research and prevention. Another implication is the need to expand standard labor force statistics to reflect better the degree of underemployment.