Resumo

RONCAGLIA, Alessandro. Rate of Unemployment and Employment Rates: Statistical Categories or Theoretical Constructs?.Traduzido porLeón Blanco. Inv. Econ [online]. 2006, vol.65, n.257, pp.45-61. ISSN 0185-1667.

Beyond the specification issues common to all statistical categories, the notions of unemployment rate and employment rates are connected to alternative theoretical approaches: the first one to the marginalist tradition and to today's mainstream, the second to the Classical and Keynesian tradition. The unemployment rate measures the distance of the economy under consideration from the full employment equilibrium; hence it points to the idea of the market as an equilibrator mechanism which under perfect competition ensures full employment of the available labour force. Within the Classical analysis of the wealth of nations, instead, a central role is played by the share of productive workers on total population, while the notion of involuntary unemployment only appears in the debates concerning poor aid and the notion of unemployment rate is never utilised. The basic faults of the traditional marginalist theory of employment, based as it is on the inverse relationship between wage rate and demand for labour, should induce us to attribute greater importance to the notion of employment rates.

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