| Term | Definition |
| U1 | it only includes people unemployed fifteen weeks or longer |
| creative destruction | as innovation occurs, old technologies and industries are desroyed |
| structural unemployment | occurs when job seekers; skill sets are not in demand because of geography or obsolescence |
| full employment | it occurs when cyclical unemployment is not present in the economy |
| natural rate of unemployment | it's associated with full time employment |
| U5 | it includes all marginally attached workers |
| employment-to-population ratio | the percentage of the working age population that is classified as employed |
| U2 | it only includes people who have lost a job as opposed to those who have quit or those who have entered or re-entered the labor force |
| employed | those who have worked at least one hour in the previous two weeks |
| U4 | it adds discouraged workers to the official unemployment rate |
| U3 | The official unemployment rate |
| "discouraged workers" | people unemployed in the general sense, but they do not meet the technical definition |
| frictional unemployment | occurs when people voluntarily enter the labor force |
| labor force | the number of employed persons plus the number of unemployed persons |
| U6 | it is the most all-inclusive measure of unemployment and includes all of those who are employed part-time because of economic reasons |
| cyclical unemployment | occurs because of contractions in the business cycle, it is not voluntary, nor is it the result of a skill-set mismated |
| unemployed | persons sixteen years of age or older that don't have a job |
| unemployment rate | a percentage of the labor force that is not currently employed |
| efficiency wages | wages that exceed the equilibrium market wage |
| marginally attached workers | people ready and available to work |
| labor force participation rate | the percentage of the working age population classified as either employed or unemployed |
