Marginally attached workers are underemployed workers who are not currently in the labor force but are available and want to be employed. According to the employment survey, these individuals have searched a position during the last twelve months but did not conduct any search for the last four weeks.
Explanation:
The definition of marginally attached workers identifies these individuals as the people who are currently unemployed, have been searching a job for some time during the last 12 months, but have not looked for a job during the last month prior to the survey. It means that formally these workers should be considered unemployed.
However, their status is marginalized due to their unstable job searching activity. Marginally attached workers matter because they influence the labor force participation rate and play a significant role in the labor market forces distribution.
The identification of the population that is marginally attached to labor force is important in the times when the economic situation is unstable. Since the marginally attached workers are not included in the commonly recognized unemployed population due to the termination of their job search, the data about the unemployment rate does not reflect the objective reality.
Importantly, the group of marginally attached workers includes discouraged workforce, or those who do not look for jobs because they believe there are no available positions or that the level of their expertise is not sufficient.
Such people constitute a significant part of marginally attached workers, who, in total, account for 2.1 million. Therefore, the exclusion of marginally attached workforce from the unemployed population impairs the objectivity of labor force participation rate.