Reasons for unemployment

Unemployment is caused when someone is laid off, fired or quits -- and is still looking for a job. This type ofnatural unemployment always occurs, even in a healthy economy. If someone retires, goes back to school or leaves the work force to take care of children or other family member, that is not unemployment. Also, if someone gives up looking for work, they are also not counted as unemployed by the Federal government. For this reason, some people say the government undercounts thereal unemployment rate 

Sometimes unemployment is a result of advanced technology, such as computers or robots, which replaces worker tasks with machines. If the workers are not retrained, they may not have the skills needed to get a new job. This is known asstructural unemployment