unemployed
Americanadjective
-
not employed; without a job; out of work.
an unemployed secretary.
- Synonyms:
- jobless, at liberty, idle, unoccupied
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not currently in use.
unemployed productive capacity.
-
not productively used.
unemployed capital.
noun
adjective
-
-
without remunerative employment; out of work
-
( as collective noun; preceded by the )
the unemployed
-
-
not being used; idle
Usage
What does unemployed mean? Unemployed means not having a paid job—not being employed.A person who’s described as unemployed is typically out of work and looking for a job. A person who’s retired, for example, wouldn’t be said to be unemployed.Unemployed is sometimes used to refer to unemployed people collectively, as in These programs are intended to help the unemployed. The state of being unemployed is unemployment. The opposite of this is employment.The verb employ also means to use, and unemployed can be used to mean unused, as in We shouldn’t let these resources go unemployed. Example: I was unemployed for a long time before I was recruited in Greenland by someone who finally saw my strengths.
Etymology
Origin of unemployed
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Continuing claims, which scale with the total size of the unemployed population, fell to 1.83 million in the week through Feb. 14, from 1.86 million a week earlier.
The report lays out a death spiral for the economy in which AI displaces white-collar workers, who are then unemployed and have no money to spend, which causes economic ruin.
From Barron's
The report lays out a death spiral for the economy in which AI displaces white-collar workers, who are then unemployed and have no money to spend, which causes economic ruin.
From Barron's
According to the investigation, ex-military personnel, ex-police officers and unemployed Kenyans aged 20–50 are the main targets of the recruiters.
From BBC
“If we had been at a party with a bunch of unemployed actors and somebody had said, ‘See those three?
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
