The term involuntary unemployment was introduced by Keynes in the General Theory as the name he attached to the phenomenon of high cyclical unemployment during the downward phase of business cycle. He didn’t necessarily restrict the term to unemployment at the trough of the business cycle, because he at least entertained the possibility of underemployment equilibrium, presumably to indicate that involuntary unemployment could be a long-lasting, even permanent, phenomenon, unless countered by deliberate policy measures.
Keynes provided an explicit definition of involuntary unemployment in the General Theory, a definition that is far from straightforward, but boils down to the following: if unemployment would not fall as a result of a cut in nominal wages, but would fall as a result of a cut real wages brought about by an increase in the price level, then there is involuntary unemployment. Thus, Keynes explicitly excluded from his definition of involuntary unemployment, unemployment…
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