Difficult time for Oregon's underemployed

[roxiejules]

via Statesman Journal -

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/fdcp/?1297097921554

Lee Thompson can’t help it.

Each day when the 54-year-old Eugene man rides his bicycle home from his part- time job as a sign waver for a mattress store, he stops on a bridge and peers over the railing at what has become — for him — the economic abyss. Every day he sees a new tent pitched inside a blackberry bush down there. Every day he dreads the idea of finding himself sleeping at the Eugene Mission or under a bridge.

After waving a sign outside for a second winter, he knows enough about the rain and cold. Thompson has taken an economic tumble in the three years since he lost a $13-an-hour job installing Corian soap dishes in luxury motor homes.

Today, he’s one of about 170,000 involuntary part-time workers in Oregon, people who are not counted in the monthly unemployment numbers but who can’t get enough work to pay their bills.

Economists describe them as “employed part time for economic reasons.”