CHRISTOPHER BOOKER:

Brewer-Thomas' work situation exemplifies a new normal for millions of American workers, underemployment.

The national unemployment rate has dropped from its great recession peak of ten percent to 4.3 percent. But if you include people who have stopped looking in the last month or those involuntarily working only part-time, you get the nation's underemployment rate. It was 17.1 percent at the peak of the recession. Today it is at 8.4 percent.

Bob Bruno is a labor and employment relations professor at the University of Illinois.