Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each person by whether the ILO definitions count them as unemployed or as inactive.
Groups: Unemployed · Inactive
- Wants a job but cannot start for six months for family reasons
- Gave up looking a year ago and has not applied since
- Registered with an agency and available, waiting to hear back
- Applied for four jobs last month and could start tomorrow
- Studying full time and not seeking work
Hints
- Apply the two tests in turn: is the person available, and have they searched recently?
- Wanting a job is not the same as being available and searching.
Show the answer
Unemployed: Applied for four jobs last month and could start tomorrow, Registered with an agency and available, waiting to hear back
Inactive: Gave up looking a year ago and has not applied since, Studying full time and not seeking work, Wants a job but cannot start for six months for family reasons
Why
The fifth case is the one that catches people out. Genuine desire for work counts for nothing in the classification; availability to start and recent active search are the two tests, and failing either sends a person into the inactive category where the unemployment rate cannot see them.
Practise Work and Labour Markets
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Sociology I is free to start.
More questions on Work and Labour Markets
- Work is defined as producing goods or services, whereas employment refers specifically to work exchanged for…
- In some quarters a country’s unemployment rate falls while the number of people in work also falls. How can…
- Collective bargaining covers a far larger share of employees in Spain than belong to a trade union, because…
- Which consequences follow from a labour market segmented into a stable primary segment and a precarious…
- Complete the account of how the organisation of industrial work was transformed.
- Arrange the steps of a Taylorist reorganisation of a job in the order Taylor prescribed.
- A different town has 7,600 people in paid work and 400 people who are available and actively seeking work.…
- Braverman’s deskilling thesis is now generally accepted as a complete description of twentieth-century…
- Spain’s temporary employment share fell sharply after the 2021 labour reform, and sociologists disagree about…