Labour market is often characterised by an imbalance between demand and supply
that sometime is a result of the available labour resources not being fully utilised.
Labour underutilisation is known as underemployment. In South Africa, academic
debates and analysis about underemployment are largely absent and workers in
such positions remain under-researched. Literature review indicates three specific
categories of underemployment namely time-related, skill-related and incomebased.
This paper analyses the demographic characteristics of time-related
underemployment using descriptive and logistic regression. The empirical
evidence portion of the paper is based on data from a survey “War on Poverty
Programme” conducted by the provincial department of Social Development in
Mpumalanga. The study is based on a sample of 21668 individuals from targeted
prioritised wards in Bushbuckridge Municipality, which is rural. This paper
reveals that females are more likely to be underemployed comparing to males. It
also indicates that older people are less likely to be underemployed compared to
younger people. Furthermore, the study results confirmed that the more educated
one gets the less likely to be underemployed. The study discusses the socioeconomic
policy implications of the findings and suggestions for future research
are made.