Unemployed Person

An Unemployed Person is a economically active person who is in an unemployed state (attempting to become an employed worker by performing job seeking acts).

• Context:
  • They can (typically) be a member of an Unemployed Population.
  • They can be impacted by an Unemployment Cause.
  • They can range from being Short-Term Unemployed Person to being a Long-Term Unemployed Person.
  • They can range from being a First-Time Unemployed Worker to being a Repeat Unemployed Person.
  • They can range from being a Young Unemployed Person to being a Prime-Aged Unemployed Person to being an Older Unemployed Person.
  • They can range from being a Unemployed Low-Skill Worker to being a Unemployed Middle-Skill Worker to being a Unemployed High-Skill Worker.
  • They can range from being a Unemployed Male Worker to being an Unemployed Female Worker.
  • They can range from being a Frictionally Unemployed Person to being a Cyclically Unemployed Person to being a Structurally Unemployed Person.
  • They can range from being a Temporarily Unemployed Worker to being a Permanently Unemployed Worker.
• Example(s):
  • an Unemployed American, Unemployed Chinese, Unemployed Ontarian.
  • a Young Unemployed Canadian Person.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • an Employed Worker, such as an underemployed person.
  • a Non-Work-Seeking Person.
  • a Disabled Person.
• See: Unemployment Rate, Beveridge Curve, Discouraged Worker.

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References

2014

• http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/08/economist-explains-8
  • Economists often refer to three types of unemployment: “frictional", “cyclical” and “structural”. Cold-hearted economists are not too worried about the first two, which refer to people moving between jobs and those temporarily laid-off during a downturn. The third kind refers to people who are excluded — perhaps permanently — from the labour market. In econo-speak, structural unemployment refers to the mismatch between the number of people looking for jobs and the number of jobs available. It is bad news both for those who suffer from it and for the society in which they live. People out of work for long periods tend to have poorer health than average. The structurally unemployed also squeeze social-security budgets.

2013

• (OECD, 2013-07-15) ⇒ OECD. (2013). “Unemployment set to remain high in OECD countries through 2014 – youth and low-skilled hit hardest." 16/07/2013 -
  • In many OECD countries, job losses and earnings losses have been concentrated in low-skilled, low-income households more than in those with higher skills and incomes. In the large emerging economies, employment was less affected by the crisis but many workers remain trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs with little social protection.
  • Young people continue to face record unemployment levels in many countries, with rates exceeding 60% in Greece, 52% in South Africa, 55% in Spain and around 40% in Italy and Portugal.
  • People on insecure, short-term contracts, especially youth and the low-skilled, were often the first to be fired as the crisis hit and have since struggled to find a new job.
  • Older workers have fared much better in the crisis, with their job rates rising or falling only modestly. Many are retiring later for a variety of reasons, including better health, the closure of access to early retirement schemes and also financial pressures. New evidence in the Outlook shows that this has not been at the expense of the young. Bringing back early retirement schemes or relaxing rules for disability or unemployment benefits for older workers would be a costly mistake, says the OECD.

2013

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Services. (2013). “Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization for States, 2013 Annual Averages." http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm
  • QUOTE: Six alternative measures of labor underutilization have long been available on a monthly basis from the Current Population Survey (CPS) for the United States as a whole. They are published in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly Employment Situation news release. (See table 15.) The official concept of unemployment (as measured in the CPS by U-3 in the U-1 to U-6 range of alternatives) includes all jobless persons who are available to take a job and have actively sought work in the past four weeks. This concept has been thoroughly reviewed and validated since the inception of the CPS in 1940. The other measures are provided to data users and analysts who want more narrowly (U-1 and U-2) or broadly (U-4 through U-6) defined measures.

     BLS is committed to updating the alternative measures data for states on a 4-quarter moving-average basis. The use of 4-quarter averages increases the reliability of the CPS estimates, which are based on relatively small sample sizes at the state level, and eliminates seasonality. Due to the inclusion of lagged quarters, the state alternative measures may not fully reflect the current status of the labor market. The analysis that follows pertains to the 2013 annual averages. Data are also available for prior time periods back to 2003.

    The six state measures are based on the same definitions as those published for the United States:

    • U-1, persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
    • U-2, job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
    • U-3, total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (this is the definition used for the official unemployment rate);
    • U-4, total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers;
    • U-5, total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; and
    • U-6, total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.

2012

• http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Glossary:Unemployment_rate
  • An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as:
    • someone aged 15 to 74 (in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway: 16 to 74 years);
    • without work during the reference week;
    • available to start work within the next two weeks (or has already found a job to start within the next three months);
    • actively having sought employment at some time during the last four weeks.

2011

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment
  • 'Unemployment (or joblessness), as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks. The unemployment rate is a measure of the prevalence of unemployment and it is calculated as a percentage by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by all individuals currently in the labour force. In a 2011 news story, BusinessWeek reported, "More than 200 million people globally are out of work, a record high, as almost two thirds of advanced economies and half of developing countries are experiencing a slowdown in employment growth, the group said."

    There remains considerable theoretical debate regarding the causes, consequences and solutions for unemployment. Classical, neoclassical and the Austrian School of economics focus on market mechanisms and rely on the invisible hand of the market to resolve unemployment.^{[citation needed]} These theories argue against interventions imposed on the labour market from the outside, such as unionization, minimum wage laws, taxes, and other regulations that they claim discourage the hiring of workers. Keynesian economics emphasizes the cyclical nature of unemployment and potential interventions to reduce unemployment during recessions. These arguments focus on recurrent supply shocks that suddenly reduce aggregate demand for goods and services and thus reduce demand for workers. Keynesian models recommend government interventions designed to increase demand for workers; these can include financial stimuli, job creation, and expansionist monetary policies. Marxism focuses on the relations between the controlling owners and the subordinated proletariat whom the owners pit against one another in a constant struggle for jobs and higher wages. This struggle and the unemployment it produces benefit the system by reducing wage costs for the owners. For Marxists the causes of and solutions to unemployment require abolishing capitalism and shifting to socialism or communism.

    In addition to these three comprehensive theories of unemployment, there are a few types of unemployment that are used to more precisely model the effects of unemployment within the economic system. The main types of unemployment include structural unemployment which focuses on structural problems in the economy and inefficiencies inherent in labour markets including a mismatch between the supply and demand of laborers with necessary skill sets. Structural arguments emphasize causes and solutions related to disruptive technologies and globalization. Discussions of frictional unemployment focus on voluntary decisions to work based on each individuals' valuation of their own work and how that compares to current wage rates plus the time and effort required to find a job. Causes and solutions for frictional unemployment often address barriers to entry and wage rates. Behavioral economists highlight individual biases in decision making and often involve problems and solutions concerning sticky wages and efficiency wages.

2003

• (Clark, 2003) ⇒ Andrew E. Clark. (2003). “Unemployment As a Social Norm: Psychological Evidence from Panel Data.” In: Journal of labor economics 21, no. 2
  • ABSTRACT: This article uses seven waves of panel data to test for social norms in labor market status. The unemployed's well‐being is shown to be strongly positively correlated with reference group unemployment (at the regional, partner, or household level). This result, far stronger for men, is robust to controls for unobserved individual heterogeneity. Panel data also show that those whose well‐being fell the most on entering unemployment are less likely to remain unemployed. These findings suggest a psychological explanation of both unemployment polarization and hysteresis, based on the utility effects of a changing employment norm in the reference group.

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