Unemployment: Why aren’t there enough jobs?

Unemployment officially refers to all the people in an economy who are looking for work but are unable to find it. It does not mean the same thing as not having a job. Governments measure unemployment by counting the people who are looking for work. People who are, for example, retired, looking after children, or sailing around the world wouldn’t count as unemployed.

People think about unemployment and its causes in all sorts of ways. Here’s a breakdown of the top five terms economists use to describe it.

‘Structural unemployment’ is the term economists use to describe unemployment that happens because of a mismatch between the skills workers have, and the jobs that are actually available. Structural unemployment usually happens because of technological change.