ECON 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Human Capital, Dependency Ratio
Document Summary
Unemployment refers to the situation where factors of production are willing and capable of being employed at the ruling wage rates but are involuntarily utilized or underutilized. Unemployment occurs when a person who is actively searching for employment is unable to find work. Unemployment is often used as a measure of the health of the economy. The most frequently cited measure of unemployment is the unemployment rate (the number of unemployed persons divided by the number of people in the labor force) Rate of unemployment = number of unemployed persons. Reasons for concern about unemployment, causes of unemployment and types of. Unemployment represents a waste of potentially productive human resources. When labor is unemployed this implies that the economy is not producing as much as it could. This in turn signifies that national income is lower than it could be and, therefore, national welfare is lower where unemployment is high.
