What is unemployed?

Being unemployed means you want to work, you are ready to start right now, but you do not have a paid job yet. Imagine your friend Alex who loves building with Lego blocks. One day, Alex breaks the big tower in the living room. Mom says, "You can only get ice cream if the tower is fixed by dinner." Alex does not spend the whole day sleeping or watching TV. Instead, Alex actively looks for the right pieces on the floor and tries to put them together until dinner comes. If the clock strikes six and the tower still has gaps, Alex is unemployed in that moment because he wants the ice cream (the job), is ready to work (he is awake and moving), but hasn't quite secured it yet.

People often think being out of work means doing nothing, like a cat napping on a rug. That is not true for people who are unemployed. To be counted as unemployed, you must meet three simple rules:

• You do not have a job right now.
• You want to get one.
• You are actively looking for one.

If your friend Sam stays in bed all day because he likes it that way, he is not unemployed. He is just relaxing. But if Alex checks the local park every morning for people who need help building things, he is actively looking. The key word is active. It is like trying to catch a butterfly. You have to move your net. If you stand still with an open net and hope a butterfly lands in it without you moving much, are you catching it? Maybe. But if you run around the garden swinging the net, you are definitely working hard even if you do not catch one immediately. Being unemployed is that running around part of the day when you don't have a job but keep trying to get one. It feels a bit like hunger; your stomach says "eat," and you look in the fridge until you find food.