Discouraged worker


In economics, a discouraged worker is a person of legal employment age who is not actively seeking employment or who has not found employment after long-term unemployment, but who would prefer to be working. This is usually because an individual has given up looking, hence the term "discouraged".
A discouraged worker, since not actively seeking employment, has fallen out of the core statistics of the unemployment rate since he is neither working nor job-seeking. Their giving up on job-seeking may derive from a variety of factors including a shortage of jobs in their locality or line of work; discrimination for reasons such as age, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, and disability; a lack of necessary skills, training, or experience; a chronic illness or disability; or simply a lack of success in finding a job.
As a general practice, discouraged workers, who are often classified as marginally attached to the labor force, on the margins of the labor force, or as part of hidden unemployment, are not considered part of the labor force, and are thus not counted in most official unemployment rates—which influences the appearance and interpretation of unemployment statistics. Although some countries offer alternative measures of unemployment rate, the existence of discouraged workers can be inferred from a low employment-to-population ratio.

United States

In the United States, a discouraged worker is defined as a person not in the labor force who wants and is available for a job and who has looked for work sometime in the past 12 months, but who is not currently looking because of real or perceived poor employment prospects.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count discouraged workers as unemployed but rather refers to them as only "marginally attached to the labor force". This means that the officially measured unemployment captures so-called "frictional unemployment" and not much else. This has led some economists to believe that the actual unemployment rate in the United States is higher than what is officially reported while others suggest that discouraged workers voluntarily choose not to work. Nonetheless, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has published the discouraged worker rate in under U-4 since 1994 when the most recent redesign of the CPS was implemented.
The United States Department of Labor first began tracking discouraged workers in 1967 and found 500,000 at the time. Today, In the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as of April 2009, there are 740,000 discouraged workers. There is an ongoing debate as to whether discouraged workers should be included in the official unemployment rate. Over time, it has been shown that a disproportionate number of young people, blacks, Hispanics, and men make up discouraged workers. Nonetheless, it is generally believed that the discouraged worker is underestimated because it does not include homeless people or those who have not looked for or held a job during the past twelve months and is often poorly tracked.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top five reasons for discouragement are the following:
  1. The worker thinks no work is available.
  2. The worker could not find work.
  3. The worker lacks schooling or training.
  4. The worker is viewed as too young or too old by the prospective employer.
  5. The worker is the target of various types of discrimination.

    Canada

In Canada, discouraged workers are often referred to as hidden unemployed because of their behavioral pattern, and are often described as on the margins of the labour force. Since the numbers of discouraged workers and of unemployed generally move in the same direction during the business cycle and the seasons, some economists have suggested that discouraged workers should be included in the unemployment numbers because of the close association.
The information on the number and composition of the discouraged worker group in Canada originates from two main sources. One source is the monthly Labour Force Survey, which identifies persons who looked for work in the past six months but who have since stopped searching. The other source is the Survey of Job Opportunities, which is much closer in design to the approach used in many other countries. In this survey, all those expressing a desire for work and who are available for work are counted, irrespective of their past job search activity.
In Canada, while discouraged workers were once less educated than "average workers", they now have better training and education but still tend to be concentrated in areas of high unemployment. Discouraged workers are not seeking a job for one of two reasons: labour market-related reasons and personal and other reasons.

European Union

Unemployment statistics published according to the ILO methodology may understate actual unemployment in the economy. The EU statistical bureau EUROSTAT started publishing figures on discouraged workers in 2010. According to the method used by EUROSTAT there are 3 categories that make up discouraged workers;
The first group are contained in the employed statistics of the European Labour Force Survey while the second two are contained in the inactive persons statistics of that survey.
In 2012 there were 9.2 million underemployed part-time workers, 2.3 million jobless persons seeking a job but not immediately available for work, and 8.9 million persons available for work but not seeking it, an increase of 0.6 million for underemployed and 0.3 million for the two groups making up discouraged workers.
If the discouraged workers and underemployed are added to official unemployed statistics Spain has the highest number real unemployed, followed by Italy, United Kingdom, France and Germany.
CountryUnderemployed Part-time workers
Thousands		Jobless persons seeking a job but not immediately available for work
Thousands		Persons available for work but not seeking it
Thousands		Unemployed
Thousands
15810060369
2927026410
276217367
886924219
1,8105825082,316
1041371
1474413316
19091361,204
1,3851,0712365,769
1,1442854443,002
6052,9751112,744
2015352
44676155
3716197
513213
8821511476
5512
13830885469
14814439189
3446321021,749
25623229860
239458701
181390
374113378
7511163207
237134101403
1,9077743342,511
81672285

United States