College and Career Readiness Practice Exam

This question tests geographic mobility in the labor market. When there are open jobs in one area but qualified workers won’t move to fill them, those vacancies go unfilled and unemployment persists for people who stay put. The term for this situation is locational unemployment, which highlights how location constraints and relocation costs can keep the labor supply from meeting local job demand.

Framing it this way helps distinguish it from other types: frictional unemployment is short-term and related to people transitioning between jobs, cycles follow the business cycle, and structural unemployment involves longer-term mismatches like skills or industries changing. Locational unemployment specifically zeroes in on the geographic aspect—unfilled jobs because workers aren’t relocating.