Unemployment

Because of its traumatic effects on those who experience it, unemployment is a matter of widespread concern. Its causes and consequences have been topics of investigation and of controversy in economics, and in psychology and sociology. On some occasions its limitation has been made a policy objective, and on others it has been used as an instrument of policy. Its harm can be mitigated but there is no prospect of its elimination.

Terminology

Unemployment is categorised differently by statisticians and by teachers of economics. The teachers use four purely conceptual categories related to its causes:

Since none of those categories can be identified empirically they are not used outside the classroom. Statisticians have assigned unemployment into categories for which it might be expected to have a different social impacts