Everyone in the American business community is aware of the ongoing unemployment problem, but research suggests we would be wise to focus on underemployment as well.

The Great Recession and its seemingly endless aftermath have pushed more and more people out of jobs that they wanted, jobs that gave them pride and a sense of self-worth, into work that rewards them with little more than a paycheck.

An article at www.remapping.com reports: “‘We have never experienced anything like this,’ said Carl Van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. It is ‘not something that as a society we’re used to dealing with.’”

Being underemployed can be a stressful, depressing experience, researchers found. It also is expected to produce long-term financial effects among recent college graduates. Many are getting off to a slow start and won’t recover quickly.

If we get back to normal, the problem would disappear. But “normal” is starting to seem like a legend.

“Underemployment is now a structural feature of our society,” said one academic expert. “Structural problems demand structural solutions.”

It might be that colleges will need to become more and more “real world” in the years to come. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported recently that more undergraduates in the University of Iowa’s Henry B. Tippie College of Business are “adding a second major or a certificate program to make themselves as competitive as possible once they reach the job market.”

Companies might need to do more training and retraining as their needs for specific skills change.

And managers and supervisors should spend more time communicating with employees, doing what they can to alleviate distress and matching workers to suitable assignments.

You can read the whole report at tinyurl.com/7manctp.