Unemployment is an important index of economic slack and lost. output, but it is much more than that. For the unemployed person, it often a damaging affront to human dignity and sometimes a Pastimes a catastrophic blow to family life. Nor is this cost.distributed in proportion to ability to bear it. It falls most heavily on the young, the semiskilled and unskilled, the black person, the older worker, and underemployed person in a low income rural area who is denied the option of securing more rewarding urban employment.The concentrated incidence of unemployment among specific groups  in the population. means far greater costs to society that can be-measured simply in hours of involuntary idleness or dollars of income lost. The extra costs include disruption of the careers of young people, increased juvenile delinquency, and perpetuation of conditions which breed racial discrimination in employment and  otherwise deny equality of opportunity. There is another and more subtle cost. The social and economic strains of prolonged high under utilization create strong pressures for cost-increasing solutions. On the side of labor. prolonged high unemployment leads to “share-E the-work” pressures for. shorter hours, intensifies resistance to technological change and to rationalization of work rules. On the side of business, the weakness of markets leads to attempts to raise prices to cover high average overhead costs and to pressures for protection against foreign and domestic competition.