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. This paper contrasts these two literatures and considers factors that might account for their differential growth including...