ABSTRACT
This chapter discuses ‘gainful employment’. Unemployment, loosely defined as not having but searching for gainful employment is however included in the national accounts. In 1936 Keynes introduced the idea of ‘involuntary unemployment’. According to him ‘classical’ economists stated that unemployment could be cured by lowering wages. For a long time, low or lowish unemployment or at least unemployment which was way lower than during the Great Depression was considered to be the new normal. High and lasting unemployment was a real possibility but could be avoided. In 1993 one of the questions of the unemployment survey was slightly altered, which led to a decline of ‘measured part time workers for economic reasons’ with about 1 percentage point of the labor force or with over 20 percent of the level of the variable. There are precise, tested and tried formal statistical definitions of labor and unemployment.
