Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/28/2011 -- A new Gallup poll shows that over 20 percent of underemployed Americans are having difficulties paying their bills on time.

The underemployment rate now stands at 16.7 percent according to the government’s broader measure of unemployment called the U-6 rate. This measure includes employed people who are working part-time but looking for full time work. It also includes workers termed as discouraged workers, people who have given up looking for work.

Overall, the situation remains grim for the majority of Americans. Only 30 percent of the respondents said that they had no problems in paying their bills. But job openings have been increasing in this January.

Hound, a job search engine, has been able to gather over 215,000 job postings from employer websites. Hound CEO A. Harrison Barnes remarks that although the media has focused a lot on unemployed Americans, the underemployed workers are not getting enough coverage.

“Many recent college graduates are doing jobs that can be done by high school graduates. Many others are in graduate school waiting to ride out the recession.” He says that most of the job openings his site has found are in healthcare, retail, hospitality, and information technology. Other categories with considerable openings include accounting and customer service.