The Myth of Unemployment

For many years it has been fashionable to speak of national economic crises in terms of unemployment. Indeed, the concept finds its way into nearly every theory of economic behavior, and myriad programs are invented and implemented in its name. But the class it designates is indeterminate if not nonexistent. Unemployment, once perhaps a useful notion, is now a myth.

But myths are slow to disappear, and professionals and laymen alike persist in using a term that is meaningless. Consider the definition most state unemployment offices use: unemployment denotes involuntary joblessness, specifically, the condition of being without gainful employment despite one’s willingness and ability to perform work. With such an elusive criterion it is not difficult to understand the ambiguity in unemployment figures. On the one hand, they may include the housewife turned part-time librarian who never intends a job to play a significant role in her life. On the other hand, it may exclude the farmer who barely clears $3,000 at harvest time. Likewise, a youth may be “unemployed” by virtue of his intentional drifting between jobs —a recent phenomenon—while an industrious paraplegic in search of a job may be left out of the classification. Hence a proliferation of hybrid terms has come into vogue to elaborate the original: marginally unemployed, hardcore unemployed, chronic unemployed, and even unemployed employed, to name a few. The result, predictably enough, is more confusion.

LR

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Larry E. Reavis

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For many years it has been fashionable to speak of national economic crises in terms of unemployment. Indeed, the concept finds its way into nearly every theory of economic behavior, and myriad programs are invented and implemented in its name. But the class it designates is indeterminate if not nonexistent. Unemployment, once perhaps a useful notion, is now a myth.

But myths are slow to disappear, and professionals and laymen alike persist in using a term that is meaningless. Consider the definition most state unemployment offices use: unemployment denotes involuntary joblessness, specifically, the condition of being without gainful employment despite one’s willingness and ability to perform work. With such an elusive criterion it is not difficult to understand the ambiguity in unemployment figures. On the one hand, they may include the housewife turned part-time librarian who never intends a job to play a significant role in her life. On the other hand, it may exclude the farmer who barely clears $3,000 at harvest time. Likewise, a youth may be “unemployed” by virtue of his intentional drifting between jobs —a recent phenomenon—while an industrious paraplegic in search of a job may be left out of the classification. Hence a proliferation of hybrid terms has come into vogue to elaborate the original: marginally unemployed, hardcore unemployed, chronic unemployed, and even unemployed employed, to name a few. The result, predictably enough, is more confusion.