unemployed

1. 1
   adjective

   Without a paid job, despite being able and willing to work.

   She stayed unemployed for months after her department was dissolved.

   Workers laid off by the mill remained unemployed throughout the recession.

   Similarjobless, workless

   Oppositeemployed, working

   Note

   An absolute adjective: a person either is unemployed or is not, so it does not take very or more. Its near-synonyms jobless and workless share its focus on paid work, and employed and working are its plain opposites. When the adjective stands alone after the, as in help for the unemployed, it has become the collective noun.

2. 2
   nounplural

   The people of a society who have no jobs, considered together as a single group.

   New training centers were opened to support the unemployed in former mining regions.

   Rising prices hit the unemployed harder than any other part of the population.

   Note

   A noun made by putting the in front of the adjective: the unemployed, never an unemployed or unemployeds. It is plural only, so the verb is plural too: the unemployed are, not is. After number of, the article can drop away (the number of unemployed keeps rising), and the verb then agrees with number. For a single person, go back to the adjective: an unemployed worker.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having no use and not being put to any work; sitting idle.

   With play stuck in the opposite half all afternoon, the visiting keeper was effectively unemployed.

   The factory's unemployed machinery was eventually sold for scrap.

   Similaridle, inactive, unused, dormant, unoccupied

   Oppositeemployed

   Note

   Here the idleness belongs to things, or to people who simply have nothing to do, rather than to someone without a job. BBC Sport's 2011 report of England's 1–0 win over Spain called keeper Joe Hart unemployed because Spain, for all their possession, never tested him. That playful use leans on the jobless meaning. Idle and disused are close synonyms, and in use is the opposite.

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