“ Men are involuntarily unemployed If, in the event of a small rise in the price of wage-goods relatively to the money-wage, both the aggregate supply of labour willing to work for the current money-wage and the aggregate demand for it at that wage would be greater than the existing volume of employment. ”
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). copy citation
| Author | John Maynard Keynes |
|---|---|
| Source | The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money |
| Topic | money price |
| Date | 1936 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300071h/printall.html |
Context
“Nor should we regard as 'involuntary' unemployment the withdrawal of their labour by a body of workers because they do not choose to work for less than a certain real reward. Furthermore, it will be convenient to exclude 'frictional' unemployment from our definition of 'involuntary' unemployment. My definition is, therefore, as follows: Men are involuntarily unemployed If, in the event of a small rise in the price of wage-goods relatively to the money-wage, both the aggregate supply of labour willing to work for the current money-wage and the aggregate demand for it at that wage would be greater than the existing volume of employment. An alternative definition, which amounts, however, to the same thing, will be given in the next chapter (Chapter 3) .
It follows from this definition that the equality of the real wage to the marginal disutility of employment presupposed by the second postulate, realistically interpreted, corresponds to the absence of 'involuntary' unemployment.”
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