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That's the standard definition for unemployment. An unemployed person is generally considered to be someone who would want to be employed, but is not. It is meant to be a measurement of the number of people who want jobs, but are unable to get them.

There are other measurements for labour force participation, which are usually fairly easy to find, and are a proportion of people who are legally able to work, against the number of actual workers.

It is as good a time as any to wish a pox on all jargon and reflect that a person with no employment is unlikely to be unemployed.

If anyone else is interested, a very light search into the history of when they picked that measure as the standard suggests it has been with us since ~1930. Apparently the nature of complaints hasn't changed much over the years.

[1] davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/origins-of-unemployment.pdf

I don't think you do the problem justice. Here are some people who fit the "no employment" metric but who we shouldn't count as "unemployed" if our goal is "anyone who wants a job, or needs a job to live without assistance, has one":

* A by-choice stay-at-home parent. There are like 10 million stay-at-home parents in the US (c.f., our entire labor force is ~125 million!)

* A contract worker/consultant, as well as employees in seasonal fields such as construction, many of whom make very decent 12-month wages but might be "unemployed" if you ask at the wrong moment.

* Anyone with a severe disability (mental or physical) which makes work difficult or impossible.

* Someone younger than retirement age (40s-50s) who has retired early by choice (e.g., no kids, dual high incomes for 20+ years, non-extravagant lifestyle; particularly relevant for this forum...)

If you counted all of these, I have no doubt our unemployment rate would at least double, if not triple. But that would be a ridiculously stupid number to even think about -- none of the above people want a job (or want a 12 month job); why should we try to organize society around forcing them to work when they don't need to and don't want to?!

I'm not claiming the current definition of "unemployed" is perfect, BTW. But IMO it's WAY better than yours...

The jargon exists because the category is useful in answering the question "how is the economy doing".

If we included people who are retired then we would see unemployment go up and down in correlation with generation sizes: when the baby boomers retire the number of "unemployed" people would go up dramatically. But that confuses the picture of whether businesses are hiring.

Hence why the question should be and is limited to ages 25-54 year olds. A "retired" 25 year old should be included in the definition of unemployment.

However, the 25-54 unemployment rate (the opposite of the "employment rate") is not calculated by state or locality in the US.

> someone who would want to be employed, but is not

Would want to be employed on what kind of job? At what pay?

> but not actively searching a job (because they are on the dole)

Depends on the country, but in most to draw the dole you have to be "actively searching for a job" (at least in the sense that would count for these stats).

What this figure _would_ exclude would be retired people and those on permanent disability.

No - to be on the dole you need to be actively searching for a job in most jurisdictions in Europe. E.g. in the UK you need to go down to the job center every week and prove you're searching for a job in order to claim unemployment benefit. It's literally called jobseeker's allowance to reflect that.

Also what is a "government job market program"? Are you referring to a government employing people en masse to inflate the employment rate? You generally need taxes to do that so it's probably a legitimate approach.

Reporting from Greece:

1) most unemployed people are not entitled to any kind of allowance. There are big groups of unemployed people (women, people aged 50+, specialized workers eg constructor workers ) who have given up the hope to find a job except from some occasional paydays (most likely black labor) which they may find from word of mouth. They do not bother going to the "job center/unemployment office".

2) The unemployment office arranges for "training" where groups of unemployed people can attend. The attendants are paid like a 100-300e per month for 1-6 months. During these (otherwise useless) trainings these people are no longer considered unemployed and one can read these disgusting news titles "unemployment down to 30% from 31.5%".

I myself was never counted as an unemployed in Greece until I found my first position (in the UK as an engineer mind you... )

JSA is being replaced by universal credit. People on UC need to spend 35 hours per week on their job search, and they need to be able to demonstrate this.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-...

> You should think of jobseeking as a full-time job. You will be expected to look or prepare for work for 35 hours a week, depending on your circumstances.

This requirement is robustly enforced.

I mention this because there are some people in the UK who think that unemployed people in the UK can get away with not doing anything.

"..some people in the UK who think that unemployed people in the UK can get away with not doing anything."

As someone who was unemployed for a while in the late 90's, it was possible. I believe the system is a lot stricter now but a lot of people base their ideas on past experience.

I have a friend who has been long-term unemployed due to health reasons. He has to attend courses and such from time to time, which he actually enjoys because he would like to work. He does a bit of voluntary work too.

The story all seems to be the same though, on the first day there are maybe 20 people who turn up and by the end of the week most of them have dropped out.

I don't know the facts but, just guessing, maybe there are still ways of playing the system?

It's really hard to play the system.

Here's someone who was signed off work for heart problems. He had to have an independent medical (because DWP doesn't believe doctors) before he could claim disability benefits.

During the independent medical he had a heart attack. The healthcare professional had to stop the assessment and call for an ambo. The ambo staff arrived, and took him to hospital.

To you or me this is proof that he wasn't faking his heart problems and he is genuinely ill.

To the DWP it's failure to complete an assessment, and he was sanctioned for this non-completion.

(Read the Debbie Abrahams comments here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm13... )

There are literally thousands of these.

So, while it's possible to defraud benefits it's not easy, and it's not common. It's certainly much tighter than it used to be in the 90s.

Dishonest unemployed people can get away with doing virtually nothing (or doing undisclosed work), most of the time, no?

In my experience, it is much more common that the job centre will refuse to believe those who are seeking work but can’t find it, than that people attempt to defraud the job centre.

If you don't get a job you're expected to take part in the Work Programme so no, people can't get away with doing nothing.

It's very hard to do undisclosed work because cash in hand work has been made much harder to get.

It's pretty hard to get away with doing nothing because your jobsearch is now online. You use DWP websites to record all your job searching. People may get away with it for a few weeks, but they're not going to get away with it for long.

We've heard a lot about the Hostile Environment. People think it just applies to Windrush, or maybe only to immigration. That's incorrect. It's a wide ranging policy and it fully applies to all benefits. That's why so many decisions are being overturned at first tier tribunal - the quality of decision making is piss poor and it's likely some of that is a deliberate choice.

Citation needed. A small minority maybe. Dishonesty can be hard work.

I'm not saying it's widespread, nor necessarily that easy (I don't know) but every few weeks I'm looking at our local news online and there's a story of someone claiming jobseekers, housing benefit, disability or attendance allowances, and they're working (and paying taxes it seems, so it should have been easy to catch them).

5s Google - http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern-ireland-news/243195/other-news..., some guy claiming whilst working.

Assuming not all cases are found - and stories I've seen in the past have been of people caught after well over a year of false claims - then it seems perfectly doable for those who are dishonest (through necessity or otherwise).

The rate of fraud on benefits is really low. Yes, it does happen, and a few people do get away with it for a long time. But it's wrong to suggest that it's widespread, and doing so causes harm because it encourages the Hostile Environment stuff.

Looking at your link, these people were caught reasonably quickly.

One of the people in your link managed to claim just £231. At his age he'd be getting £73 per week, so he fraudulently claimed less than a month.

It's harder to work out the other person, because they were also claiming housing benefit.

He lived at Ballysillan Crescent, Belfast, which is a B14 post code. Local housing allowance rates are https://www.nihe.gov.uk/index/benefits/lha/current_lha_rates...

Here's that street on Google maps: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.6291805,-5.9663763,3a,75y,...

Let's take the one bedroom rate of £86.16 per week, plus £73.10 per week = £159.26 per week. (this assumes he claims as a single person, and it lowers the weekly amount. I do this because I want to maximise the time he claimed for as a worst case). £4,114 / £159 = = 25 weeks. So, about 6 months. If he was claiming the 2 bedroom rate, or was claiming JSA as a couple he would have got more moeny per week, and so was caught much quicker.

You'll find similar in the other cases. People try it and they usually get caught within a year.

I don't think I said it was widespread, or anything to indicate that? I've been on Jobseekers and am likely to be again: yes we should guard against creating a hostile environment and assuming everyone is on the make, but pretending there's no fraud at all is surely not the way.

Are few people dishonest, or are most dishonest people caught.

My concern is if the system encourages moral compromise for survival and what this means for our society as a whole.

> currently not earning their keep, but not actively searching a job (because they are on the dole) will not be unemployed

Why? If you are on the dole but without any disability or other commitment, you are considered "available to start work", no? Being available is one of the typical conditions for getting unemployment benefits.

> unable to take a job in the next two weeks because the are in a government job market program, will not be listed as unemployed

That's true, and it's one of the reasons why it's not super meaningful to try to compare and interpret these figures without any additional information.

This is how the BLS U3 statistic is arrived at. The U3 is the federal-level unemployment figure that is most commonly pointed to.

The U3 specifically does not include discouraged workers, those who are underemployed, or those who simply aren't looking.

As long as we are comparing apples to apples (i.e., these figures are all indicative of the same basic data with the same restrictions), there's no issue comparing them.

Some countries' job centers put jobless people into bullshit training courses that do nothing for them, but being in a course means you are not counted as "looking"/"available" for a while. Other countries do not do this.

The "same restrictions" apply, but countries in the first category will have fewer "unemployed" people even if they have the same number of discouraged/underemployed/jobless/whatever people.

Is that apples to apples?

> but being in a course means you are not counted as "looking"/"available" for a while

Are there enough people to whom that distinction applies to be more than statistical noise relative to the other regional variations that would have an impact?

Seems like a minor nit to pick in the grand scheme of things.

Austria is regularly criticized for doing this through such measures and others (pushing people into early retirement as well).

Here is a thing in English that seems to come for free if you give them bogus personal data: https://www.agenda-austria.at/en/publication/austria-the-lan...

A longer German blurb about this study is here: https://www.agenda-austria.at/oesterreich-das-land-der-verst...

They claim 250,000 hidden unemployed for 220,000 "official" unemployed for Q1 2013, i.e., the official figures would be off by a factor of more than 2. But they don't say how many of those hidden unemployed are in training courses. Maybe the full study does say, I can't be bothered.

Thanks, surprised it's that significant of an impact.

Yes it is, since those countries allow people to claim unemployment while not looking for work (via a rather silly rigmarole way of doing so, but still). At the sharp end, there are fewer people in that country who want a job (whether because they'll lose their unemployment if they don't get one or otherwise) and can't get it.

All that is true for the unemployment rate itself. It just means that the unemployment rate is not a useful proxy for a country's economic health, as it is often taken to be.

I thought that in most countries, if you are on the dole, you must search for work if you are capable, or you get a severe reduction in your financial support.

There are some people that have just given up on finding a job; they're able and willing to work, but because of reasons they can't find a job. Those might be on the dole, but they might also be able to survive off of a single income.

These stats should have a category "wants to work but can't find any, and is not entitled to benefits". Or "Able to work but doesn't need to because rich".

In my country if you are on a dole and the bureau of employment finds a job for you (usually not very nice job) - you have to take it or have a good reason why you can't (health for example). If you don't - you're left on your own.

Also, unemployment benefits end after 6 months no matter what.

> Also, unemployment benefits end after 6 months no matter what.

What happens after six months if you don't have family willing to support you? You're on the streets?

There are other social benefits unrelated to employement (for example for kids from poor families, etc), but in principle - yes.

Now it's not so bad, you can find a job if you really want (it might be bad, but it's there). In 90s we had 20% unemployment and almost no social benefits. It was rough.

It's almost never the case. The way welfare works is kind of...buggy.

You accept a job, do it for a couple of days, and that's it.

Quite literally, yes.

Which sounds fair, you can still apply for jobs in your sector while you're on the other job. But doing something is usually better than doing nothing, even if it's unqualified work and doesn't pay well.

Underemployment reports in the US include those people. They usually also include people working part-time "for economical reasons". But that's considered underemployment, not unemployment.