This short note emphasizes and illustrates two basic points: (1) The private costs of unemployment, i.e., the costs borne by the unemployed themselves, vary substantially and are often extremely low. This low private cost is an important cause of the permanently high unemployment rate in the...

This nontechnical paper was prepared as a background study for the NBER Conference on Youth Joblessness and Employment. Our analysis of data collected in the March 1976 and October 1976 Current Population Surveys leads us to the following conclusions: Unemployment is not a serious problem for...