Frictional unemployment

Frictional unemployment exists because both jobs and workers are heterogeneous, and a mismatch can result between the characteristics of supply and demand.

Such a mismatch can be related to skills, payment, worktime, location, attitude, taste, and a multitude of other factors.

Workers as well as employers accept a certain level of imperfection, risk or compromise, but usually not right away; they will invest some time and effort to find a match.

The length of gap for an average transition from one job to another can be lessened by a prosperous economy and lengthened by a constricting one; the number of those voluntarily seeking new employment opportunities may be increased by a boom and involuntarily by a recession.

However, some number of people will choose to change jobs in either circumstance, establishing a minimum yet functionally ineradicable level of frictional unemployment.