UNEMPLOYMENT. The term unemployment has acquired quite definite technical significance. A League of Nations com mittee stated in 1919: "An unemployed person is regarded as one who is seeking work for wages, but is unable to find any suit ed to his capacities and under conditions which are reasonable, judged by local standards." The term, as applied technically, ap plies only to persons who work for wages, who are able and de sirous to work, and who are unable to find work suited to their capacities. The term applies, therefore, only to employable per sons who are in the labour market. Pigou says, "The amount of unemployment . . . which exists in any industry is measured by the number of hours' work by which the employment of the per sons attracted to or occupied in that industry falls short of the number of hours' work that these persons would have been willing to provide at the current rate of wages and under current con ditions of employment." (Unemployment, 1916.) Unemployment exists, under the terms of unemployment insur ance laws, when a person fit for employment cannot obtain suit able employment; i.e., work suited to his capacities and under conditions that are reasonable for him to accept. Typically, it is not construed to be "reasonable" to force a person to take a job vacated because of an industrial dispute, or one which pays sub stantially less or requires more hours of labour than those which obtain in his usual occupation or which are prevalent in the com munity where the work is performed, or to expect him to make un usual sacrifices in accepting employment. The insurance acts re fuse to recognize for benefit purposes unemployment resulting from voluntary quitting (unless due to acts or conditions at tributable to the employer which justify such quitting, such as in justice, acts of persecution, unreasonable changes in the condi tions of the employment) or loss of a job because of misconduct. Nevertheless, from the economist's point of view such non-com pensable unemployment is in fact unemployment. The essential thing is that an able bodied worker is out of employment and is seeking, or at least available for, employment.
Unemployment includes under-employment. Much of the un employment compensated under unemployment insurance laws is in fact under-employment. The latter term signifies insufficient employment to provide a livelihood. It is applied to people who have jobs, or who have occupations in which they secure jobs more or less regularly though intermittently (such as longshore work or building construction), but do not get in enough hours of work to earn a livelihood. In other words, under-employment is part time employment. The proposal vigorously promoted in the United States in 193o-31 that unemployment be relieved by re quiring or inducing those who had jobs to divide their work with those who did not have work, i.e., the so-called staggered-employ
ment, was a proposal to provide under-employment for all to relieve unemployment for some. The under-employed consist principally of workers whose time is seldom fully occupied but who get enough work in their chief occupations to prevent them from seeking other occupations. The resulting waste of energy and industrial ability has been due largely to the tendency of each industry em ploying such labour to have its own reserve of labour. Decasual ization has reduced under-employment in some industries but under-employment is still very prevalent. (See CASUAL LABOUR.) Unemployment applies only to wage earners. Employers or pro fessional people, and the self-employed idle for lack of business are not considered as unemployed unless they go into the labour market and seek employment for wages. Neither does the term cover the idleness of those incapable of working or unwilling to work—such as the aged, the incapacitated, or the sick on the one hand and the vagrants, criminals, and work-shy on the other.
The line of distinction between employable and unemployable persons is indistinct. Particular physical or mental limitations disqualify persons from some occupations but not from others. The person with certain limitations often is seeking work in some occupation for which he is not fit and commonly does not know the kinds of work for which he is fit. Statistics of unemployment include a large number of persons at all times who are near the border line of unemployability, either complete unemployability or unemployability in the local industries or occupations in which they are, perforce, seeking employment. It is one of the functions of employment exchanges, commonly too imperfectly performed, make such people aware of the types of occupations for which they could qualify.
Another interesting fact : the same degree of disability will prevent some persons from getting work but not others. There is as much difference in the ability of persons with one arm, defec tive sight, or hearing, or weak physique to get employment as there is in the ability of physically normal persons. The shading of employability into unemployability is so gradual that there is a large twilight zone in which are untold thousands whom it is difficult to tell whether to classify as "unemployed" or "unem ployable." Employment exchanges have difficulty in getting jobs for them; training programs disappointing success in retraining them ; unemployment insurance offers them but limited protec tion, and unemployment relief officials are often puzzled concern ing what policy should be pursued with respect to them. (See