Unemployment

Rising unemployment increases the crime rate, the suicide rate, and causes a decline in healthiness. Unemployment is the condition of not having a job, often referred to as being " out of work", or ______________. Not having a job when a person needs one, makes it difficult if not impossible to meet financial obligations such as purchasing food to feed oneself and one's family, and paying one's bills; failure to make mortgage payments or to pay rent may lead to homelessness through foreclosure or eviction. Being unemployed, and the financial difficulties and loss of health insurance benefits that come with it, may cause ____________ and illness, and are major sources of mental stress and loss of ___________ which may lead to depression, which may have a further negative impact on health.

In economics, unemployment refers to the condition and extent of joblessness within an economy, and is measured in terms of the unemployment rate, which is the number of unemployed workers divided by the total civilian labor force.

Typically, employment and the labor force include only work done for monetary gain. Hence, a homemaker is neither part of the labor force nor unemployed. Neither _____________ students nor prisoners are considered to be part of the labor force or unemployment. Lacking a job often means lacking social contact with fellow employees, a purpose for many hours of the day, lack of self-esteem, mental stress and illness, and of course, the inability to pay bills and to purchase both _______________ and luxuries. The latter is especially serious for those with family obligations, debts, and/or medical costs, where the availability of health insurance is often linked to holding a job. This feared cost of job loss can spur psychological anxiety, weaken labor unions and their members' sense of solidarity, encourage greater work-effort and lower wage demands, and/or abet protectionism. This last means efforts to preserve existing jobs (of the " insiders") via barriers to entry against " outsiders" who want jobs, legal obstacles to ______________, and/or tariffs and similar trade barriers against foreign competitors.

The most developed countries have __________ for the unemployed as part of the welfare state. These unemployment benefits include unemployment insurance, welfare, unemployment compensation and subsidies to aid in retraining. The main goal of these programs is to alleviate short-term hardships and, more importantly, to allow workers more time to search for a good job.