"Other Indicators of Labor Market Slack. Another manifestation of slack in the labor market is the number of people who are employed but are not working as many hours as they would prefer. The incidence of part-time employment for economic reasons (resulting from slack work or business conditions or a worker’s inability to find fulltime employment) remains much higher than it was before the recession. Consequently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ U-6 measure of underutilization in the labor market stood at 12.2 percent in the second quarter, down from a peak of 17.1 percent in fourth quarter of 2009 but still well above its value of 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. (The U-6 measure combines the number of unemployed people with numbers for two other groups of people: those who are “marginally attached” to the labor force—that is, who are not currently looking for work but are willing and able to work and who have looked for work in the past 12 months—and those who are employed part-time for economic reasons.) Consistent with the trends in the U-6 measure, average hours worked per worker fell substantially during the recession and remain below their prerecession level."
Source: Page 40 of the Congressional Budget Office's Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024.
