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In the context of economics, a person is considered unemployed if he or she is willing and able to work for a fee, but has not yet found a job. Theoretically, unemployment represents a waste of productive resources. As a result, countries around the world are striving to minimize unemployment and thus achieve economic growth.

According to Xinhua News Agency, the International Labour Organization released data on January 24, 2011, showing that the number of unemployed people in the world in 2010 was 205 million, a record high. Among them, the phenomenon of youth unemployment is serious. The group expects the number of unemployed to remain above 200 million in 2011. The International Labour Organization said on the 24th: "Despite the strong rebound in economic growth in many countries, the global official unemployment statistics in 2010 were 205 million, basically the same as in 2009, and 27.6 million more than in 2007, the year before the global economic crisis." The organization projects the global unemployment rate at 6.1 percent in 2011, equivalent to 203.3 million people. Juan Somavia, Director-General of the International Labour Organization, said that the number of unemployed people could exceed 200 million in 2011 for the third year in a row. According to the organization, half of the world's new job losses after the financial crisis occurred in developed countries. In some emerging economies, such as Brazil and Thailand, unemployment has fallen below pre-crisis levels in 2008.

From the above material, we can recognize that the so-called "unemployed" refers to a person who is above a certain age, has not worked during the inspection period, but has the ability to work, and is looking for a job. From the perspective of the economy as a whole, the population of a certain age is usually called the working-age population, and some of them are called employed, and some of them are looking for work but have not yet found them. There is also a part of the population that does not want to work or does not look for a job, which is called the absent population, and the proportion of the unemployed in the working population is the unemployment rate. Theoretically, unemployment represents a waste of productive resources. As a result, countries around the world are striving to minimize unemployment and thus achieve economic growth.

Employment is the foundation of people's livelihood and an issue of great concern to the public. Especially after entering the 21st century, with the further deepening of China's reform, the employment problem is no longer just a simple economic problem, but has further become a social problem that cannot be avoided.

In the context of economics, a person is considered unemployed if he or she is willing and able to work for a fee, but has not yet found a job. Unemployment can be divided into three types: frictional unemployment, structural unemployment, and cyclical unemployment:

1. Frictional unemployment refers to short-term and partial unemployment that is unavoidable in the production process due to the change of occupation and other reasons. The nature of this unemployment is transitional or short-term. It usually originates from the supply side of labor and is therefore considered a type of job-seeking unemployment, i.e., there are vacancies on the one hand, and the number of unemployed people looking for jobs on the other hand, because of the incomplete information on the labor market, and it takes a certain amount of time for manufacturers to find the required employees and for the unemployed to find suitable jobs. Frictional unemployment exists at any time and will increase with changes in the economic structure, but from the perspective of economic and social development, the existence of such unemployment is normal.

2. Structural unemployment refers to unemployment caused by the mismatch between the supply and demand of labor, which is characterized by both unemployment and job vacancies, and the unemployed either do not have the right skills or live in an improper place, so they cannot fill the existing job vacancies. Structural unemployment is long-term in nature and usually originates on the demand side of labor. Structural unemployment is caused by economic changes that cause the demand for specific types of labor in specific markets and regions to be relatively lower than their supply.

The relatively low demand for labor in a particular market may be caused by the following reasons: first, technological changes, the original workers cannot adapt to the requirements of new technologies, or technological progress has caused the demand for labor to decline; The second is the change in consumer preferences. Changing consumer preferences for goods and services have led to the expansion of some industries and the downsizing of others, resulting in the loss of jobs for the workforce in the downsizing industries; The third is the immobility of labor. The existence of liquidity costs restricts the movement of the unemployed from one place or industry to another, thus perpetuating structural unemployment.

3. Cyclical unemployment refers to unemployment caused by the decline in aggregate social demand during a recession or depression in the economic cycle. When economic development is in a period of recession in a cycle, the aggregate demand of society is insufficient, so the scale of production of manufacturers is also reduced, which leads to more widespread unemployment. The impact of cyclical unemployment on different industries is different, and in general, the greater the income elasticity of demand, the more severe the impact of cyclical unemployment.

In other words, in industries where people's incomes have fallen and demand for products has fallen sharply, cyclical unemployment is more serious. Contractionary gaps are often used to explain the causes of such unemployment. The contraction gap is the difference between real aggregate demand and aggregate demand for full employment when real aggregate demand is less than aggregate demand for full employment.

Unemployment is a widespread phenomenon and there will be unemployed people in any country. Generally speaking, people are reluctant to lose their jobs and think that unemployment is a bad phenomenon. However, many Western economists believe that a reasonable unemployment rate and the existence of unemployment are one of the necessary conditions for promoting social development.

For example, the phenomenon of college student unemployment in China is quite serious, but the phenomenon of college student unemployment is not useless to the whole society. Because "water flows to a low place, people go to a high place", only through free flow can human resources be optimally allocated, and the efficiency of resource utilization can be improved as much as possible. From the perspective of human resource allocation, the phenomenon of college students' unemployment is the result of the free flow of human resources, and in turn, it also removes obstacles and creates more adequate conditions for the free flow of human resources, and also has a certain role in talent reserves. In this sense, the unemployment of college students is not entirely a waste of human resources, but can promote the optimal allocation of human resources to a certain extent.