We calculate the underemployment rate as the number
of graduates underemployed divided by total graduates
employed. In Chart 3, we report the underemployment rate
from 1990 to 2012 for two different groups: all college graduates
and recent college graduates. For college graduates as a
whole, the underemployment rate has held steady at around
33 percent over the past two decades—meaning that about one
in three college-educated workers typically holds a job that
does not require a degree. The fact that the rate has remained
fairly uniform at different points in the business cycle suggests
that it is not unusual for a significant share of college graduates
to work in jobs that do not require a degree.