1. Introduction
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines individuals as unemployed if they are out of work, have looked for work recently, and are currently available to start working within 2 weeks.1 The economically inactive, or people out of the labour force, encompass anyone who is out of work and not satisfying the recent search and/or current availability criterion. Such an aggregation conceals much heterogeneity in the labour force attachment of the inactive, who can be broadly split into three groups: people who are searching but not currently available for work; people who are not searching but would like to work; and people who are not searching and would not like to work. Each group can also be subdivided according to their reasons for being in that group. Given this heterogeneity, it is conceivable that some members of the inactive behaviourally resemble the ILO unemployed rather closely, making it appropriate to devise alternative measures of unemployment in which they are included to obtain a more accurate measure of the state of the labour market.