There still remain some unanswered questions such, for example, as:  whether in seasonal trades (e.g., teaching, or the building trades) allowance should be made for normal vacations and for slack times, not to be counted as unemployment; and whether lack of work at one’s principal occupation is ever or always unemployment when the person is actually employed or can get work at some lower paid employment.  The more frequent answer to these questions is in the negative but this in some cases is almost palpably absurd.  Further study is necessary to work out a generally acceptable concept of unemployment.

Sec. 14. #Individual maladjustments causing unemployment.# The cause or causes of the evil must be ascertained before a remedy can be intelligently applied.  It is pretty generally agreed that unemployment is essentially a problem of maladjustment of the labor supply, and not that of an absolutely and permanently redundant supply.  That is, there is, under static conditions, work for all to do at various rates of wages that would bring about a value equilibrium of services.[9] The maladjustments are either of an individual or of a general character.  Individual maladjustment may be due to a mistake in choosing an occupation (e.g., through the vain ambition of one unfitted to be an artist, actor, lawyer, or teacher); or to failure to acquire by adequate training the necessary skill; or to loss of capacity by accident, old age, or failure of mental or moral powers; in all of which cases the problem verges upon or becomes that of the unemployable.  The “can’t-works” and the “won’t-works” must be divided from the “want-works.”  If there is any remedy in such cases it must be through re-education, personal reform, or change of occupation.

Many persons look upon this type of cases as almost wholly accounting for the problem of the unemployed.  They are confirmed in this opinion by the fact that the out-of-work group in any trade at any time is, on the average, the least efficient group of workers in the trade.  This results from selection by the employers.  This selection is due to the relative not to the absolute efficiency or inefficiency of workers, and must result whenever there are any discoverable economic differences in the workers (all things considered) that are employed at the same wage.  This would continue even tho the poorest workers were to raise their efficiency above that of the best men now retained.  “Personal inefficiency” may explain a chronic low wage or absolute unemployability in a particular case, but it does not explain intermittent lack of work for those willing and able to work.  Unemployment is a social problem and not merely an individual problem.