Unemployment (or joblessness) 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 labor force.
Types of Unemployment: * Classical Unemployment
Classical or real-wage unemployment occurs when real wages for a job are set above the market-clearing level, causing the number of job seekers to exceed the number of vacancies. Many economists have argued that unemployment increases the more the government intervenes into the economy to try to improve the conditions of those without jobs. For example, minimum wage laws raise the cost of laborers with few skills to above the market equilibrium, resulting in people who wish to work at the going rate but cannot as wage enforced is greater than their value as workers becoming unemployed.
Cyclical Unemployment
Cyclical or Keynesian unemployment, also known as deficient-demand unemployment, occurs when there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy to provide jobs for everyone who wants to work. Demand for most goods and services falls, less production is needed and consequently fewer workers are needed, wages are sticky and do not fall to meet the equilibrium level, and mass unemployment results. Its name is derived from the frequent shifts in the business cycle although unemployment can also be persistent as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. With cyclical unemployment, the number of unemployed workers exceeds the number of job vacancies, so that even if full employment were attained and all open jobs were filled, some workers would still remain unemployed.
* Structural Unemployment
Structural unemployment occurs when a labour market is unable to provide jobs for everyone who wants one because there is a mismatch between the skills