Unemployment - Unemployment o Definitions The Labor Force...

• Unemployment
o Definitions:
 The Labor Force is the number of people who have jobs or who are
actively looking for jobs
 The Employment Rate is the number of people who have jobs divided by
the Labor Force
 The Unemployment Rate is one minus the Employment Rate; alternatively,
it’s the number of people who don’t have jobs and are looking for jobs
divided by the Labor Force
o Important Points
 You can’t be unemployed if you’re not looking for a job!
 If we didn’t have this requirement, we’d be forced to list children, senior
citizens, students, the heavily disabled, etc. as unemployed. Clearly this
would be ridiculous.
 Unemployment also misses several major issues (underemployment,
overqualification, discouragement, etc).
• Keep this in mind when people fixate on the unemployment rate as
a huge issue!
• To repeat: if you’re not looking for a job, you’re not unemployed!