A look at underemployment

Many laid-off workers who have found new jobs are taking pay cuts or settling for part-time work when they get new ones, sometimes taking jobs far below their skill levels, The Wall Street Journal reports.

This is what it looks like on an individual level.

In California, former auto worker Maria Gregg was out of work five months last year before landing a new job—at a nearly 20% pay cut.

In Massachusetts, Kevin Cronan, who lost his $150,000-a-year job as a money manager in early 2009, is now frothing cappuccinos at a Starbucks for $8.85 an hour.

In Wisconsin, Dale Szabo, a former manufacturing manager with two master's degrees, has been searching years for a job comparable to the one he lost in 2003. He's now a school janitor. 

This is what it looks like in the aggregate.

Between 2007 and 2009, more than half the full-time workers who lost jobs that they had held for at least three years and then found new full-time work by early last year reported wage declines, according to the Labor Department. Thirty-six percent reported the new job paid at least 20% less than the one they lost.

The severity of the latest downturn makes it likely that it will be years, if ever, before many of their wages return to pre-recession levels, says Columbia University labor economist Till von Wachter.