ABSTRACT
The unemployment rate might become an indicator for whether the workday needed to be further shortened or could be allowed to expand. The Danish government has found that they can save money on the leave system because the payment is less than unemployment benefits. Walters points to the diminished political importance of unemployment and argues that its very relevance is fading the way pauperism did during the nineteenth century. Governments asserted strong responsibility for the level of joblessness when they believed Keynesian demand management could master unemployment. Different distinctions between work and employment also helps to explain differences in the political salience of unemployment across the European Union and among post-communist countries. Despite convergence on standard procedures for measuring the labor force, unemployment will continue to be a political construction. The basic assumptions underlying the labor force framework are rapidly eroding and new kinds of social policies have emerged with radically different conceptual premises.
