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Unemployment is the state in which a person is without work, available to work, and is currently seeking work. more...

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The unemployment rate is used in economic studies and economic indexes such as the United States' Conference Board's Index of Leading Indicators. The rate is determined by dividing the number of unemployed workers by the total civilian labor force.

Causes

Open unemployment is associated with capitalist economies. Preliterate communities treat their members as parts of an extended family and thus do not allow unemployment. In precapitalist societies such as European feudalism, the serfs, though clearly dominated and exploited by the lords, were never "unemployed" because they had direct access to the land, and the needed tools, and could thus work to produce crops. Just as on the American frontier during the nineteenth century, there were day laborers and subsistence farmers on poor land, whose position in society was somewhat analogous to the unemployed of today. But they were not truly unemployed, since they could find work and support themselves on the land.

Under both ancient and modern systems of slave-labor, slave-owners never let their property be unemployed for long. (If anything, they would sell the unneeded laborer.) Planned economies such as the old Soviet Union or today's Cuba typically provide occupation for everyone, using substantial overstaffing if necessary. (This is called "hidden unemployment," which is sometimes seen as a kind of underemployment, definition 3.) Workers' cooperatives—such as those producing plywood in the U.S. Pacific Northwest—do not let their members become unemployed unless the co-op itself goes bankrupt.

Since not all unemployment may be "open" and counted by government agencies, official statistics on unemployment may not be wholly accurate under capitalism. Most poorer capitalist countries lack a modern welfare state and unemployment insurance so that it is very difficult to afford being unemployed for very long: people often end up taking jobs below their skill levels.

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