Despite a national unemployment rate that’s at a 17-year low and 100 straight months of job growth, millions of Americans who want full-time work are still stuck in part-time work, as this story from the Chicago Tribune illustrates. According to the Labor Department’s jobs report released Nov. 3, the percentage of “involuntary” part-time workers –which was 2.9 percent in 2007 before the Great Recession — surged to 6.7 percent by March 2010 and has since shrunk to 3.4 percent. Over the past 12 months, the number of involuntary part-time workers has decreased by 1.1 million. However, as the Tribune notes, the country has not returned to pre-crisis levels on this measure, which worries some economists.