It is true that under the wages system the individual is not free to choose permanent unemployment. But no other imaginable social system could grant him a right to unlimited leisure. That man cannot avoid submitting to the disutility of labor is not an outgrowth of any social institution. It is an inescapable natural condition of human life and conduct. In the imaginary construction of the evenly rotating economy there is no unemployment because we have based this construction on such an assumption.
Unemployment is a phenomenon of a changing economy.
The fact that a worker discharged on account of changes occurring in the arrangement of production processes does not instantly take advantage of every opportunity to get another job but waits for a more propitious opportunity is not a consequence of the tardiness of the adjustment to the change in conditions, but is one of the factors slowing down the pace of this adjustment. It is not an automatic reaction to the changes which have occurred , independent of the will and the choices of the job-seekers concerned, but the effect of their intentional actions. It is speculative, not frictional. Catallactic unemployment must not be confused with institutional unemployment . Institutional unemployment is not the outcome of the decisions of the individual job-seekers.