The Collaborative International Dictionary
Unemployment \Un`em*ploy"ment\, n. Quality or state of being not employed; -- used esp. in economics, of the condition of various social classes when temporarily thrown out of employment, as those engaged for short periods, those whose trade is decaying, and those least competent.
Note: Unemployment is usually cointed as the condition of those who wish to work, but cannot find a suitable job, rather than others who may voluntarily refrain from working, such as retired persons, youth, or those remaining at home to care for young children. The
unemployment rate in economics is thus the proportion of those actively seeking work but unable to find it, to the total labor force, expressed as a percentage.
WordNet
n. the percentage of the work force that is unemployed at any given date
Usage examples of "unemployment rate".
They were mainly signalmen and yeomen who'd left whatever life they'd had on the subcontinent to take on this new one, and tried hard to be good at it, because as meager as the pay was, it was preferable to the economic chances they took in a country whose unemployment rate hovered between 20 and 25 percent.
In only two years, the United States progressed from operating in a Depression-era economy, with an unemployment rate of almost 20 percent, to suffering from a labor shortage, with workers needed in every area of the economy.
During the 1990s, the unemployment rate fell by 2 percentage points.
We had more than twenty million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate and smallest welfare rolls in thirty years, the lowest crime rate in twenty-five years, the lowest poverty rate in twenty years, the smallest federal workforce in forty years, the first back-to-back surpluses in forty-two years, seven years of declining teen pregnancies and a 30 percent increase in adoptions, and 150,000 young people who had served in AmeriCorps.
Although the United States was enjoying its lowest unemployment rate in twenty-eight years, the lowest crime rate in twenty-five years, and the smallest percentage of our citizens on welfare in twenty-nine years, Native American communities that had not grown wealthy from gambling operations were still in bad shape.
A company that made filing cabinets had located in Ridgeway, and in recessionary times, the unemployment rate locally was an enviable 3.
The average formal unemployment rate on Inferno is ninety percent.