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120 Int'l Lab. Rev. 563 (1981)
The Notion of Voluntary Unemployment

handle is hein.journals/intlr120 and id is 577 raw text is: International Labour Review, Vol. 120, No. 5, September-October 1981 The notion of voluntary unemployment Guy STANDING* 1. Introduction The concept of unemployment is hard to define, partly because it combines a condition (being without employment), a need (for work), an attitude (desire for work), and an activity (searching for work). Some question the applicability of the term if used to describe the position of someone satisfying the first criterion without satisfying one or more of the others. Hence the claim that many of the unemployed, in both industri- alised and low-income countries, are in fact voluntarily unemployed. If so, the associated social distress would be overstated, and unemployment could be downgraded as a policy concern. However, it is difficult to distinguish, conceptually and empirically, between voluntary and involuntary unemployment. This article considers common procedures used in making that distinction, the intention being to identify and question the assumptions involved in the notion of voluntary unemployment. 2. Macro-economic notions of voluntary unemployment Before considering the main behavioural elements in the concept, it is worth noting the two most influential analytical approaches to the issue. The first is associated with Keynes, for whom voluntary unemployment was due to the refusal or inability of a unit of labour ... to accept a reward corresponding to the value of the product attributable to its marginal productivity. For Keynes the main issue was involuntary unemployment, which he defined in a convoluted manner: Men are involuntarily unemployed if, in the event of a small rise in the price of wage goods relatively to the money wage, both the aggregate supply of labour willing to work for the current money wage and the aggregate demand for it at that wage would be greater than the existing volume of employment. He excluded from involuntary unemployment those between jobs and those temporarily or seasonally without work. *International Labour Office. Copyright © International Labour Organisation 1981

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