Labour market and unemployment

In the labour market the working-age population offers its labour and firms demand it; the price of labour is the wage. Demand is larger when the wage is low and smaller when it is high, while supply is the opposite; the wage at which they are equal is the market price. Wages depend on the knowledge and skill the job requires, its danger and hardship, and the profit the worker brings the firm, which is why a manager or programmer earns more than an unskilled helper. The unemployed are able-bodied citizens who want to work but cannot find a job or are looking for one; students, people not looking for work, or those who do not want to work are not counted as unemployed. Types of unemployment: frictional (while changing jobs or looking for a first job), seasonal (when seasonal work ends), structural (when technology and industries change) and cyclical (during an economic decline); the hardest is cyclical unemployment. The labour force is the sum of the employed and the unemployed, and the unemployment rate = number of unemployed : labour force · 100%. State services such as the labour exchange help the unemployed to find jobs.