| Definition | Visible underemployment is primarily a statistical concept directly measurable by labour force and other surveys, reflecting an insufficiency in the volume of employment. Invisible underemployment is primarily an analytical concept reflecting a misallocation of labour resources or a fundamental imbalance between labour and other factors of production. "For operational reasons, the statistical measurement of underemployment may be limited to visible underemployment"
According to the ILO definition of visible underemployment, persons visibly underemployed comprise all persons in paid or self employment, whether at work or not at work, involuntarily working less than the normal duration of work determined for the activity, who were seeking or were available for additional work during the reference period.
In the measurement of visible underemployment there are two elements viz
- the number of persons visibly underemployed and
- the quantum of visible underemployment.
In order to obtain a comprehensive picture on the employment condition of the population, the survey collected information from the currently employed population on their availability for more work. This information was elicited from all persons aged 5 years and over who were currently employed. In order to estimate visible underemployment it is necessary to take account of the duration they had engaged themselves in work during the reference week include only those who had worked less than the minimum stipulated duration. Although the person may have sought additional work in spite of having worked long hours, such persons should not be included as the visible underemployed in any analysis as it would merely inflate the underemployed population. Their desire to seek additional work may have been guided by considerations such as, their low employment earnings in poorly remunerated low productivity tasks; and jobs where actual time spent on work is shorter than the duration accepted as working hours.
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