Underemployment

Full employment is an economic situation in which there is no cyclical or deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely structural and frictional, may remain. Full employment does not entail 100% employment-to-population ratio. For instance, workers who are "between jobs" for short periods of time as they search for better employment are not counted against full employment, as such unemployment is frictional rather than cyclical. An economy with full employment might also have unemployment or underemployment where part-time workers cannot find jobs appropriate to their skill level, as such unemployment is considered structural rather than cyclical. Full employment marks the point past which expansionary fiscal and/or monetary policy cannot reduce unemployment any further without causing inflation.

Some economists define full employment somewhat differently, as the unemployment rate at which inflation does not continuously increase. Advocacy of avoiding accelerating inflation is based on a theory centered on the concept of the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) and those who hold it usually mean NAIRU when speaking of full employment. The NAIRU has also been described by Milton Friedman, among others, as the "natural" rate of unemployment. Such views tend to emphasize sustainability, noting that a government cannot sustain unemployment rates below the NAIRU forever: inflation will continue to grow so long as unemployment lies below the NAIRU.

An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of study, taught and researched as part of higher education. A scholar's discipline is commonly defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which they belong and the academic journals in which they publish research.

Disciplines vary between well-established ones in almost all universities with well-defined rosters of journals and conferences and nascent ones supported by only a few universities and publications. A discipline may have branches, which are often called sub-disciplines.

Reserve army of labour is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. It refers to the unemployed and underemployed in capitalist society. It is synonymous with "industrial reserve army" or "relative surplus population", except that the unemployed can be defined as those actually looking for work and that the relative surplus population also includes people unable to work. The use of the word "army" refers to the workers being conscripted and regimented in the workplace in a hierarchy under the command or authority of the owners of capital.

Marx did not invent the term "reserve army of labour". It was already being used by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England. What Marx did was theorize the reserve army of labour as a necessary part of the capitalist organization of work.

In the United States, the concept of a working class remains vaguely defined, and classifying people or jobs into this class can be contentious. According to Frank Newport, "for some, working class is a more literal label; namely, an indication that one is working."

Economists and pollsters in the United States generally measure the "working class" using college degrees as an idicator, rather than focusing on occupation, income, or asset ownership. Other definitions refer to those in blue-collar occupations, despite the considerable range in required skills, income, and ownership among such occupations. Many members of the working class, as defined by academic models and traditional definitions, are often described in the vernacular as middle-class, despite the term's ambiguous meaning.

Job hunting, job seeking, or job searching is the act of looking for employment, due to unemployment, underemployment, discontent with a current position, or a desire for a better position. The immediate goal of job seeking is usually to obtain a job interview with an employer which may lead to getting hired. The job hunter or seeker typically first looks for job vacancies or employment opportunities.

Human capital flight is the emigration or immigration of individuals who have received advanced training in their home country. The net benefits of human capital flight for the receiving country are sometimes referred to as a "brain gain" whereas the net costs for the sending country are sometimes referred to as a "brain drain". In occupations with a surplus of graduates, immigration of foreign-trained professionals can aggravate the underemployment of domestic graduates, whereas emigration from an area with a surplus of trained people leads to better opportunities for those remaining. However, emigration may cause problems for the home country if trained people are in short supply there.

Research shows that there are significant economic benefits of human capital flight for the migrants themselves and for the receiving country. The consequences for the country of origin are less straightforward, with research suggesting they can be positive, negative or mixed. Research also suggests that emigration, remittances and return migration can have a positive effect on democratization and on the quality of political institutions in the country of origin.