From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 13:13, 10 July 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wiki Commons


Unemployment is the condition of not having a job, often referred to as being "out of work", or unemployed. Not having a job when a person needs one, makes it difficult if not impossible to meet financial obligations such as purchasing food to feed oneself and one's family, and paying one's bills; failure to make mortgage payments or to pay rent may lead to homelessness through foreclosure or eviction. Being unemployed, and the financial difficulties and loss of health insurance benefits that come with it, may cause malnutrition and illness, and are major sources of mental stress and loss of self-esteem which may lead to depression, which may have a further negative impact on health.

In economics, unemployment refers to the condition and extent of joblessness within an economy, and is measured in terms of the unemployment rate, which is the number of unemployed workers divided by the total civilian labor force.

The terms unemployment and unemployed are sometimes used to refer to other inputs to production that are not being fully used — for example, unemployed capital goods.

The history of unemployment is the history of industrialization. It was not considered an issue in rural areas, despite the "disguised unemployment" of rural laborers having little to do, especially in conditions of overpopulation.

Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Unemployment" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools