📊 Labor Market Detective | AP Macro 2.3 Unemployment

🧑‍💼 Activity 1: Employed, Unemployed, or Not in Labor Force?

💡 Definitions (BLS / AP):
✅ Employed: Worked for pay at least 1 hour during the survey reference week (full-time or part-time), or was temporarily absent from a job.
🔍 Unemployed: No job, actively looked for work in the last 4 weeks, and available to work.
🏠 Not in labor force: Neither employed nor unemployed — e.g. full-time students not seeking work, retirees, homemakers, discouraged workers.
Note: people under 16 and institutionalized people are excluded from the survey population entirely — for this game, place them in "Not in Labor Force".

✅ Employed

🔍 Unemployed

🏠 Not in Labor Force

👆 Tap a card, then tap a zone to place it. Tap a placed card to send it back. Nothing is graded until you press Check.

⚠️ Activity 2: Why the unemployment rate understates joblessness

🧩 The official (U-3) rate misses discouraged workers and other marginally attached workers (they are not in the labor force), and counts the underemployed as fully employed. Match each scenario to the group it describes.

😔 Discouraged workers

🔄 Other marginally attached

⏳ Underemployed workers

👆 Tap a card, then tap a zone. Tap a placed card to send it back.

🔄 Activity 3: What changes the Natural Rate of Unemployment (NRU)?

📌 NRU = Frictional + Structural. It changes over time due to labor force characteristics, labor market institutions, and government policies.

👥 Labor force characteristics

🏛️ Labor market institutions

📜 Government policies