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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What's the difference between underemployed and unemployed?[/quote]

NP.  I'm underemployed. I have a job that requires bar admittance, but I should have a much better, more challenging, higher paying position given my credentials (T3 law school with honors, federal clerkship, law journal, firm and govt. experience, etc.)  Does that make sense?  So I'm not unemployed, but I'm underemployed.  My former position required a lot of travel, so I "mommy-tracked" myself into this position when I had kids. I really need to move on, though, before I find that I can't. [/quote]

I don't agree with your assessment.  If you had those credentials and you kept on track but still ended up in your job doing what you are doing, then I would agree that you are underemployed.  However, in your case, you chose the track you ended up in.  I think what happened is that you made a choice to go into a track with less stress, less time commitment and less travel.  Once you've chosen that track, it can be hard to get back on the fast track.  There has been an overabundance of lawyers coming out of law schools for the last couple of decades and all those other top school graduates are looking for the fast track jobs.  There are more heavily credentialed graduates than there are fast track jobs available and some are going to have to fall off or be pushed off the track.  In your case, you chose to get off the track.  Think of it like an MLB player who gets injured but instead of immediately getting back into training, opts to do something else for a while, like go back to school and get a prestigious degree.  Four years later, he tries to get back into baseball but gets recruited to a minor league team and never gets back into the majors.  Is that underemployed?  Maybe if he never gave it up.  But he did and he did something else and there was a host of talented young players coming out and he wasn't the hot start with potential anymore.

I think it's great that you chose to prioritize your family.  You made a sacrifice to do so.  But, the consequence is that you can't just jump back in where you left off and you have to work your way back to it.  To do that, you have to be willing to make sacrifices for your family again and going back to a high stress, high time commitment and high travel position is not an easy decision when you have kids.  Even if you kids are tweens or teens, you still don't want to check out of raising your family.  [/quote]

I'm not PP but none of this negates the fact that she's underemployed.  You're saying she's there as a consequence of her choices, which I'm sure she wouldn't disagree with, but it doesn't change the fact that she's underemployed.[/quote]

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