Unemployment (Economics)

Recall cards on unemployment. How economists define and measure it: employed versus unemployed versus out of the labor force, the unemployment rate, the labor force participation rate, discouraged and underemployed workers, and the Current Population Survey. Patterns of unemployment across the business cycle and across age, education, race, and countries. Short-run causes: cyclical unemployment and the theories of sticky wages (implicit contracts, efficiency wages, the adverse selection of wage cuts, the insider-outsider model, and relative wage coordination). Long-run causes: the natural rate of unemployment, frictional and structural unemployment, full employment, and the factors that raise or lower the natural rate.