Roughly a quarter of the more than 26 million people working part-time in the United States want a full-time job but can't find one, a reality that has left those workers struggling to pay their bills, according to a new study.

The Rutgers University survey called a "A Tale of Two Workforces: The Benefits and Burdens of Working Part Time" found that nearly a third of workers stuck with part-time jobs described their financial condition as poor. Less than 10 percent of people who choose to work part-time put themselves in that category, according to the survey.

Carl Van Horn, a co-author of the study and the director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, said the large pool of workers who are stuck working part-time because they cannot find a full-time job is a signal of weakness in the economy.

"There's two million more people in the United States than before the recession that are in that category even though the unemployment rate is down," he said.

Those workers, which the report calls "involuntary workers," fare worse financially than their "voluntary" counterparts who prefer to work part-time.

The survey found 63 percent of people working part-time for economic reasons faced a financial hardship related to their job situation in the past two years that required many to borrow from family or friends, rack up credit card debt or sell off possessions to make ends meet. Only 29 percent of voluntary workers said they faced a financial hardship due to their part-time work.