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Natural rate of unemployment

The natural rate of unemployment is the name that was given to a key concept in the study of economic activity. Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps, tackling this 'human' problem in the 1960s, both received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their work, and the development of the concept is cited as a main motivation behind the prize. A simplistic summary of the concept is: 'The natural rate of unemployment, when an economy is in a steady state of "full employment", is the proportion of the workforce who are unemployed'. Put another way, this concept clarifies that the economic term "full employment" does not mean "zero unemployment". It represents the hypothetical unemployment rate consistent with aggregate production being at the "long-run" level. This level is consistent with aggregate production in the absence of various temporary frictions such as incomplete price adjustment in labor and goods markets. The natural rate of unemployment therefore corresponds to the unemployment rate prevailing under a classical view of determination of activity. The natural unemployment rate is mainly determined by the economy's supply side, and hence production possibilities and economic institutions. If these institutional features involve permanent mismatches in the labor market or real wage rigidities, the natural rate of unemployment may feature involuntary unemployment. The natural rate of unemployment is a combination of frictional and structural unemployment that persists in an efficient, expanding economy when labor and resource markets are in equilibrium. Occurrence of disturbances (e.g., cyclical shifts in investment sentiments) will cause actual unemployment to continuously deviate from the natural rate, and be partly determined by aggregate demand factors as under a Keynesian view of output determination. The policy implication is that the natural rate of unemployment cannot permanently be reduced by demand management policies (including monetary policy), but that such policies can play a role in stabilizing variations in actual unemployment.

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Job guarantee
A job guarantee is an economic policy proposal that aims to provide a sustainable solution to inflation and unemployment. Its aim is to create full employment and price stability by having the state promise to hire unemployed workers as an employer of last resort (ELR). The economic policy stance currently dominant around the world uses unemployment as a policy tool to control inflation. When inflation rises, the government pursues contractionary fiscal or monetary policy, with the aim of creating a buffer stock of unemployed people, reducing wage demands, and ultimately inflation.
NAIRU
Non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is a theoretical level of unemployment below which inflation would be expected to rise. It was first introduced as NIRU (non-inflationary rate of unemployment) by Franco Modigliani and Lucas Papademos in 1975, as an improvement over the "natural rate of unemployment" concept, which was proposed earlier by Milton Friedman. In the United States, estimates of NAIRU typically range between 5 and 6%.
Underemployment
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