Labor Supply, Labor Demand, and Men's Underemployment in Rural and Urban Labor Markets1

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines how the structure of the labor market differentially affects white men's underemployment in urban and rural areas. The effects of labor supply and demand, including special measures of public employment and two previously neglected aspects of competition—global industrial competition and sexual labor market competition—on unemployment, low‐wage employment, and low‐hours employment are examined. A higher proportion of females in the labor force in rural labor market areas provides benefits to men in the form of lower unemployment, but also costs them, through an increased prevalence of low‐wage employment, while the opposite effects are evident for areas with concentrations in periphery service industries. The findings suggest that industrial restructuring in the form of increased foreign competition and an increased loss of core transformative jobs are especially threatening to rural men's employment adequacy.