Every country that has imposed some form of lockdown has suffered massive unemployment. How you describe it or what strings you attach to it are semantics. Unemployment is not "what list" you are on (idle employee or unemployed worker), but whether you are working or not working.

Julian, you are wrong. My daughter and most people I know on unemployment continue to maintain a relationship with their employer... so my daughter will return to her previous employer once they are up and operating. They may have legally severed their relationship (which is good in case a better job comes up... and we have some tenants for whom that has happened), but most business are keeping in contact with their "unemployed" employees so they can start up as quickly as possible. Some are even interviewing for new employees with indefinite start dates.

But because some people are receiving more in the US on unemployment than they did working, I know a number of people who are waiting until their unemployment comes close to running out before they look for a job or return to their old one.

I expect as our country is opens up, there will be many employers that are short handed for awhile because of an inability to hire "unemployed" workers. I know that is the case with a few employers and I suspect it will be true for many.

Perhaps the biggest problem I see in the US relates to small business owners covering "the rent" and overhead. Government programs in the US are mostly designed around preserving compensation income and benefits. We normally want companies that cannot support their overhead to go out of business to make room for new companies.

Schlumpeter called this "creative destruction". In order to free up resources and labor from businesses that no longer fill a need and therefore can't survive, the US system allows them to go broke and in their place a new business will appear. Imagine if none of the buggy whip companies in the past went broke, what would our country do with all those buggy whips! I see it on main street in my town all the time... and old style American diner style restaurant dies and a new style Mexican or Thai or Poke place rises in its place. A traditional clothing store closes and a trendy store replaces it.

But while this pandemic will have the same effect in this instance the companies that are going broke often are ones where consumer demand was healthy, but the lockdown denied these businesses the ability to sell their product. And so these small business owners will suffer, not because of anything wrong with their business, but because of a government imposed action.