This is a topic where macro and micro have a pretty big gap.
If you’re asking about measured large-group unemployment, you probably don’t get very good causality from any given change, and there’s no useful, simple model of the motivations and frictions of potential-employeers and potential-employees. It’s a very complicated matching market.
If you’re asking about some specific reasons that an individual may be out of work or become out of work, you’ll get a lot better result and some concrete reasons. But everyone you talk to will say “that doesn’t scale!”.
At its most useless modeling level, unemployment happens when some people don’t want to (or aren’t allowed to) accept the wage that someone can and will offer.
This is a topic where macro and micro have a pretty big gap.
If you’re asking about measured large-group unemployment, you probably don’t get very good causality from any given change, and there’s no useful, simple model of the motivations and frictions of potential-employeers and potential-employees. It’s a very complicated matching market.
If you’re asking about some specific reasons that an individual may be out of work or become out of work, you’ll get a lot better result and some concrete reasons. But everyone you talk to will say “that doesn’t scale!”.
At its most useless modeling level, unemployment happens when some people don’t want to (or aren’t allowed to) accept the wage that someone can and will offer.