Unemployment In industrialized countries in which most people can earn a living only by working for others, being unable to find a job is a serious problem. Because of its human costs in deprivation and a feeling of rejection and personal failure, the extent of unemployment is widely used as a measure of workers' welfare. The proportion of workers unemployed also shows how well a nation's human resources are used and serves as an index of economic activity. Economists have described the types of unemployment as frictional, structural, and cyclical. The first form of unemployment is Frictional unemployment. Frictional unemployment arises because workers seeking jobs do