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Abstract
By the measures used in this article, nearly a third of the rural labor force is underemployed, whether through being out of a job, or working for low pay, or working too few hours. Yet only about a third of them are counted as unemployed. Besides its direct economic effect, underemployment also exerts an indirect effect, hindering remedial efforts. Federal jobs programs, for example, often base their funding on the unemployment rate, inadvertently directing benefits away from rural areas.