A five‐dimensional unemployment model with two distributed time delays

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to build and analyze a model of labor market slack considering unemployment along with employment in which the number of hours is limited to a level below that preferred by employees. We thus have “underemployment” along with unemployment. We analyze the need for potential policy action directed at the reduction of unemployment, simultaneous with an autonomous process of labor market job creation and migration. We model delays in labor market responses to past unemployment and vacancies creation and capture the effect on unemployment through a non‐linear dynamic system. We observe not only job separation and matching but also movement into and out of underemployment. The model allows for migration in an open economy context. We analyze the stability behavior of the resulting equilibria for our dynamic system, including Dirac and weak kernels.