NEW YORK CITY, USA – For 14 years, BC Dodge spent 14 years as a marketing and communications professional in the nonprofit sector in the Washington, DC area, building a career telling the stories of others. However, in late 2024, his steady career reached a rapid pace.
He was laid off from his job during a restructuring. The news came without any warning. One day he was at work, the next he was sitting at home staring at numbers, trying to figure out how to keep paying his mortgage and putting food on the table.
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He is married and his partner is a teacher, but he didn’t do well in math. One paycheck might cover you for a little while, but it won’t be enough to maintain long-term stability.
So he immediately started applying for new jobs. In three months, he submitted 350 job applications. He had six interviews.
After months of searching, something clicked.
He rose through the hiring process at a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization, reaching a position high enough to sit across from senior executives. I felt like I could finally catch my breath.
Then the ground moved again. At the time Dodge was interviewing for his new job, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, was advising President Donald Trump’s administration on how to shrink the federal government. That meant cutting funding to agencies that provide contracts and funding to a wide range of nonprofit organizations across the country. The effect rippled outward, and Dodge was caught in the crosshairs.
Contracts were canceled and funding streams dried up. Nonprofits dependent on government support have had to retract their ambitions and scale back. It’s the same nonprofit organization Dodge was seeking employment from.
“I got a call from Human Resources and they said they weren’t hiring for that position and all hiring was on hold. I couldn’t argue with them because I was hearing the same thing from the organizations I’d been talking to since I started applying: ‘We relied on federal funding and now that money is gone,'” Dodge said.
Then it was back to square one. He began his search again, but this time a cloud of uncertainty hung over the industry in which he worked. Dodge finally got what he could get: a part-time job in his field. Although the salary was far less than what he had previously earned, he still accepted it. He thought that some income was better than no income.
The result is underemployment. Underemployment can manifest itself in many ways, often when workers are looking for full-time work but only find part-time work, or when the jobs they have don’t make full use of their skills and training. While this is commonly associated with industries like restaurants and retail, it is also impacting sectors with fewer resources and shrinking opportunities, such as the nonprofit sector, where jobs are becoming increasingly precarious and full-time stability is harder to find due to a wave of government funding cuts in 2025.
As a result, underemployed workers’ incomes decline, sometimes falling below the cost of living or even joining the ranks of the working poor.
Underemployment is on the rise, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has been tracking the rate since 1978. Currently, 8% of the U.S. population is underemployed, an increase of 0.5% from 2024 and 1.1% from 2023.
At the same time, many Americans are feeling an increase in spending.
Tariffs have hit low- to middle-income people harder than other groups. An analysis by the Yale Budget Institute found that while the cost of necessities like health care has increased, low-income households pay a higher percentage of their after-tax income on goods subject to tariffs than higher-income households.
Earlier this year, Congressional leaders failed to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. Premiums increased by an average of 144 percent, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“Some people have lost their jobs and found new jobs with lower wages, but others have kept their jobs, but their health insurance premiums have gone up. Their electric bills have gone up. Their salaries no longer cover basic living expenses,” said Jillian Hisho, a bankruptcy attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina.
These increased costs and the slow job market have led to an increase in inquiries about filing for bankruptcy from potential customers in an effort to avoid losing their homes to foreclosure, she said.
“In one day last week, 85 foreclosures were filed in Mecklenburg County (where Charlotte is located). Foreclosures happen every day, but 85 in one day is an unusually high number. Two years ago, we were averaging 10 to 20 a day, and now the number of foreclosures is approaching triple digits every day,” Hisho said.
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Increasing economic pressures are hitting workers in a variety of sectors, including financial services and government services. An Ohio-based accountant who did not wish to be named has worked a patchwork of accounting and management jobs over the past few years. He was fired from his central Ohio research organization in March.
After months of searching, he found a new job, but it wasn’t as an accountant and the salary was far short of covering living expenses.
“I work as a sales coordinator, a job I really don’t want to do, but it was the only thing that helped me understand how bad the situation was. It’s not enough to survive,” he said.
The labor market is under stress. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs will reach more than 1.1 million in 2025, but job creation has not kept up, with only 584,000 jobs added. As a result, more workers, including Dodgers and accountants, are settling for low-wage or part-time jobs that don’t cover basic living expenses.
Michelle Evermore, a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, said economic uncertainty caused by tariffs and advances in artificial intelligence has essentially forced companies across a wide range of industries to go dormant, either staying put or downsizing.
“People who were already on the margins are being completely pushed out, and that puts pressure on everyone who is holding on to their jobs,” Evermore told Al Jazeera.
The number of people working part-time for economic reasons such as not being able to find full-time work or having their working hours reduced, which is one of the key measures to combat underemployment, reached 4.9 million in January. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday’s employment report for January, which showed a decrease of 453,000 from the previous month but an increase of 410,000 from the same period last year.
Although the number of long-term unemployed remained unchanged from the previous month, it increased by 386,000 from the same period last year to 1.8 million.
The nonprofit sector was hit particularly hard last year, with 28,729 jobs lost in 2025, up from 5,640 jobs lost the year before, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Like the Ohio accountant, Dodge has been looking for new opportunities since losing his full-time job a year and a half ago. He applied for 460 jobs but only got interviews for a few.
Weekend work: washing dishes
The market is only getting tighter. U.S. employers cut more than 108,000 jobs in January, but employers announced intentions to hire just 5,300 new workers this month, the lowest on record since Challenger, Gray & Christmas began tracking the data in 2009.
“Employers don’t want to make big investments like increasing employee pay at this point,” added Evermore, who served as a policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor under former President Joe Biden.
Labor market turnover remained stagnant in December. Amid economic uncertainty and slowing growth in new jobs, many Americans are clinging to the jobs they already have. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Turnover Survey (JOLTS), the number of job openings decreased by 386,000 from the previous month to 6.5 million.
Employment and turnover rates, including layoffs and layoffs, remained unchanged. This follows November’s report, which also showed little movement in both new hires and job separations.
Taken together, this means that people like accountants, who are underemployed, are finding it increasingly difficult to find new roles, either part-time to augment their existing income, or to fully replace them.
“I also work at a friend’s cafe on the weekends, washing dishes, and have applied and interviewed for other opportunities. But the story is the same: I don’t get any offers. At the same time, I’m wondering whether to change my profession or even go back to school, even though I already have a master’s degree,” he said.
And while the outlook remains bleak, shared suffering has also created an unexpected sense of camaraderie among those struggling to survive.
Dodge found it late at night, scrolling through Reddit and watching strangers recount versions of the same search that got him nowhere.
“I doomscroll a lot,” he said. “I take some comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one feeling depressed about the state of politics and the global economy and struggling to find viable employment 12, 13, 14, even 15 months later.”
For now, the realization that others are stuck in the same place and hitting the same wall is enough for him to move forward, submit an application and wait for a reply that may never come.
