In industrialized countries in which most people can earn a living only by
working for others, being unable to find a job is a serious problem. Because of its human costs in deprivation and a feeling of rejection and personal failure, the extent of unemployment is widely used as a measure of workers' welfare. The proportion of workers unemployed also shows how well a nation's human resources are used and serves as an index of economic activity. Economists have described the types of unemployment as frictional, structural, and cyclical.
The first form of unemployment is Frictional unemployment. Frictional
unemployment arises because workers seeking jobs do not find them immediately. While looking for work they are counted as unemployed. The amount of frictional unemployment depends on the frequency with which workers change jobs and the time it takes to find new ones. Job changes occur often in the United States. A January 1983 survey showed that more than 25 percent of all workers had been with their current
employers one year or less.…
