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Econ (Employment)
Vocabulary Words
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Unemployed | The condition of not having a job but being a member of the labor force. To be considered unemployed, a person must be jobless yet actively searching for a job by having searched in the last four weeks. |
Employed | The condition of having a job. |
Labor Force | The number of employed plus unemployed people age sixteen and over. |
Unemployment Rate | This rate is equal to the number of unemployed persons divided by the number of people in the labor force. |
Labor Force Participation Rate | The labor force divided by the working age population. |
Marginally Attached Workers | These are people ready and available to work who have conducted a job search within the past twelve months but have not searched in the last four weeks and are therefore not included in official unemployment statistics. |
Discouraged Workers | People who have given up the job search and are not officially classified as unemployed. The presence of these people in the economy means that the official unemployment rate understates actual unemployment. |
U1 | The unemployment rate that only includes people unemployed fifteen weeks or longer. |
U2 | The unemployment rate that only includes people who have lost a job as opposed to those who have quit or those who have entered or reentered the labor force. |
U3 | The official unemployment rate. |
U4 | The unemployment rate that adds discouraged worker to the official unemployment rate. |
U5 | The unemployment rate that includes all marginally attached workers. |
U6 | The most all-inclusive measure of unemployment. Includes all those listed in the previous rates plus those who are employed part time because of economic reasons. |
Employment-to-Population Ratio | The number of employed people divided by the working age population. |
Frictional Unemployment | Voluntary unemployment that occurs when a person enters the labor force and looks for a job. This always exists in an economy. |
Structural Unemployment | Unemployment caused by the permanent destruction of jobs in a dying industry, a mismatch between the skills necessary for employment and the seekers' skill set, and government programs that create incentives to remain unemployed. |
Creative Destruction | A term that refers to the ongoing process of technological innovation and industrial decline. As one industry is being born, another industry is dying. The death of old industry frees up factors of production for the new industry. |
Efficiency Wages | A wage that exceeds the market wage. They encourage worker productivity but also play a role in creating unemployment. |
Cyclical Unemployment | Unemployment associated with downturns in the business cycle. Most economists view this as harmful and believe that government intervention is necessary to prevent it from occurring. |
Full Employment | The level of employment that exists when the economy is being productively efficient. This is associated with an economy at the natural rate of unemployment. |
Natural Rate of Unemployment | The rate of unemployment that exists when there is no cyclical unemployment present in the economy. This rate is thought to be independent of the inflation rate. |