Underemployment - and underutilized

As regular readers of this blog know, every month when the employment data is released I highlight the involuntary underemployed as a key indicator. Now, the Wall Street Journal has discovered the underemployment issue in a piece tells the story of a number of underemployed -- Working Two Jobs and Still Underemployed. The story doesn't get into any policy discussions. But it does raise, in passing, a related and hidden problem - underutilized. As the story notes:

State labor officials and economists generally label the underemployed as those who are working part-time when they would prefer full-time work, as well as people who are working beneath their skill level.
Federal figures on the underemployed, however, don't count that second group -- those who are overqualified for their jobs.

Getting a handle on the underutilized (overqualified) will take a lot more research -- including a better conceptualization of "overqualified" and appropriate skills and skill levels. That is a set of labor policy questions which will bedevil the I-Cubed Economy.