Labour economics, or labor economics, seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for wage labour. Labour is a commodity that is supplied by labourers, usually in exchange for a wage paid by demanding firms. Because these labourers exist as parts of a social, institutional, or political system, labour economics must also account for social, cultural and political variables.
Macroeconomics is a branch of economics that deals with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. This includes regional, national, and global economies. Macroeconomists study topics such as output/GDP and national income, unemployment, price indices and inflation, consumption, saving, investment, energy, international trade, and international finance.
Unemployment, according to the OECD, is people above a specified age not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period.
Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may remain. For instance, workers who are "between jobs" for short periods of time as they search for better employment are not counted against full employment, as such unemployment is frictional rather than cyclical. An economy with full employment might also have unemployment or underemployment where part-time workers cannot find jobs appropriate to their skill level, as such unemployment is considered structural rather than cyclical. Full employment marks the point past which expansionary fiscal and/or monetary policy cannot reduce unemployment any further without causing inflation.
Unemployment benefits, also called unemployment insurance, unemployment payment, unemployment compensation, or simply unemployment, are payments made by authorized bodies to unemployed people. In the United States, benefits are funded by a compulsory governmental insurance system, not taxes on individual citizens. Depending on the jurisdiction and the status of the person, those sums may be small, covering only basic needs, or may compensate the lost time proportionally to the previous earned salary.
In economics, a discouraged worker is a person of legal employment age who is not actively seeking employment or who has not found employment after long-term unemployment, but who would prefer to be working. This is usually because an individual has given up looking, hence the term "discouraged".
A Beveridge curve, or UV curve, is a graphical representation of the relationship between unemployment and the job vacancy rate, the number of unfilled jobs expressed as a proportion of the labour force. It typically has vacancies on the vertical axis and unemployment on the horizontal. The curve, named after William Beveridge, is hyperbolic-shaped and slopes downward, as a higher rate of unemployment normally occurs with a lower rate of vacancies. If it moves outward over time, a given level of vacancies would be associated with higher and higher levels of unemployment, which would imply decreasing efficiency in the labour market. Inefficient labour markets are caused by mismatches between available jobs and the unemployed and an immobile labour force.
Active labour market policies (ALMPs) are government programmes that intervene in the labour market to help the unemployed find work, but also for the underemployed and employees looking for better jobs. In contrast, passive labour market policies involve expenditures on unemployment benefits and early retirement. Historically, labour market policies have developed in response to both market failures and socially/politically unacceptable outcomes within the labor market. Labour market issues include, for instance, the imbalance between labour supply and demand, inadequate income support, shortages of skilled workers, or discrimination against disadvantaged workers.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines the employment rate as the employment-to-population ratio. This is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of a country's working age population that is employed. This includes people that have stopped looking for work. The International Labour Organization states that a person is considered employed if they have worked at least 1 hour in "gainful" employment in the most recent week.
The insider-outsider theory is a theory of labor economics that explains how firm behavior, national welfare, and wage negotiations are affected by a group in a more privileged position. The theory was developed by Assar Lindbeck and Dennis Snower in a series of publications beginning in 1984.
Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is a theoretical level of unemployment below which inflation would be expected to rise. It was first introduced as NIRU by Franco Modigliani and Lucas Papademos in 1975, as an improvement over the "natural rate of unemployment" concept, which was proposed earlier by Milton Friedman.
Unemployment in the United Kingdom is measured by the Office for National Statistics.
Youth unemployment is the situation of young people who are looking for a job but cannot find a job, with the age range being defined by the United Nations as 15–24 years old. An unemployed person is defined as someone who does not have a job but is actively seeking one. To be qualified as unemployed for official and statistical measurement, the individual must be without employment, willing and able to work, of the officially designated "working age" and actively searching for a position. Youth unemployment rates tend to be higher than adult rates in every country in the world.
Statistics on unemployment in India had traditionally been collected, compiled and disseminated once every ten years by the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MLE), primarily from sample studies conducted by the National Sample Survey Office. Other than these 5-year sample studies, India has – except since 2017 – never routinely collected monthly, quarterly or yearly nationwide employment and unemployment statistics. In 2016, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a non-governmental entity based in Mumbai, started sampling and publishing monthly unemployment in India statistics.
Unemployment in Poland appeared in the 19th century during industrialization, and was particularly severe during the Great Depression. Under communist rule Poland officially had close to full employment, although hidden unemployment existed. After Poland's transition to a market economy the unemployment rate sharply increased, peaking at above 16% in 1993, then dropped afterwards, but remained well above pre-1993 levels. Another period of high unemployment occurred in the early 2000s when the rate reached 20%. As Poland entered the European Union (EU) and its job market in 2004, the high unemployment set off a wave of emigration, and as a result domestic unemployment started a downward trend that continued until the onset of the 2008 Great Recession. Recent years have seen an increase in the unemployment rate from below 8% to above 10% (Eurostat) or from below 10% to 13% (GUS). The rate began dropping again in late 2013. Polish government (GUS) reported 9.6% registered unemployment in November 2015, while European Union's Eurostat gave 7.2%. According to Eurostat data, since 2008, unemployment in Poland has been constantly below the EU average. Significant regional differences in the unemployment rate exist across Poland.
Ourania "Rania" Antonopoulou a.k.a. Rania Antonopoulos is a Greek heterodox economist and Syriza politician. After the January 2015 election, MP Alexis Tsipras named her as the Greek Alternate Minister for Combating Unemployment in his cabinet tasked to implement a job guarantee policy based on her previous work experience and a specific study for Greece with other colleagues at the Levy Economics Institute. She remains a Syriza member. On the 5th of September 2018 she was appointed by the Greek Government as the Permanent Representative of Greece (Ambassador) to the OECD in Paris, France, entrusting her to represent the country despite the severe media attack she had been subjected to a few months earlier. Between February and August 2015, she also was a member of the Hellenic Parliament.
The rate of youth unemployment in South Korea fluctuated in the 9–11% range between 2001 and 2014. It was above 10% in 2018 and down to 7.1% by the end of 2019 - the lowest level since 2011.
The unemployment rate in the Republic of Korea as of December 2021 is 3.7 percent. Since its rapid globalization and democratization, the unemployment rate has been comparatively low compared to most OECD countries. This remains the case as of 2021. Being Asia’s fourth-largest economy, the country's booming exports have helped to maintain the unemployment rate very low by the standards of developed countries. There are several measurement differences between the standard of measurement set by the International Labour Organisation and the official measurement of unemployment in the Republic of Korea, set by Statistics Korea, that contribute to an inflated unemployment rate when compared to other countries that abide more strictly by the standard set by the International Labour Organisation.
Unemployment in Kerala discusses the causes and measures of Kerala unemployment and strategies for reducing it. Job creation and unemployment are affected by factors such as economic conditions, global competition, education, automation, and demographics. These factors can affect the number of workers, the duration of unemployment, and wage levels.
Australia 
Austria 
Belgium 
Brazil 
Canada 
Chile 
Costa Rica 
Czech Republic 
Denmark 
Estonia 
Finland 
France 
Germany 
Greece 
Hungary 
Iceland 
Ireland 
Israel 
Italy 
Japan 
Luxembourg 
Mexico 
Netherlands 
New Zealand 
Norway 
Poland 
Portugal 
Russia 
Slovakia 
Slovenia 
South Korea 
Spain 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Turkey 
United Kingdom 
United States 
