DCHP-2

unemployment DCHP-2 (November 2016)

• n. & adj. — informal, dated, Administration

  short form for unemployment insurance.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — Unemployment generally means being out of work. Now, in Canada, as well as in other locations (see OED-3, s.v. "unemployment" [2]), it is also used to mean 'unemployment benefit' or 'unemployment insurance'. In earlier quotations (see the 1987 quotation), the term appears most often in compounds such as "unemployment allowance" or the like. However, in later uses, the head noun is dropped and unemployment is understood as referring to unemployment insurance based on the context alone, e.g. "I can't claim unemployment" (see the 1994 quotation). With the name change of unemployment insurance to employment insurance legislated in 1996, the term is somewhat dated, yet still used in spoken discourse. Chart 1 shows that the phrase to be on unemployment is in North America most common in Canada.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "unemployment"(3), which is marked "Cdn informal".

  See also: employment insurance  unemployment insurance  UI  

  • Predominantly used in this sense in the spoken language (see, e.g., the 2013 quotation which is from an interview transcript of a Hamilton, ON, job seeker).