On the other hand, there's "incapacity", which means the person is medically considered unfit to work (until such time as the medical appraisal changes). Now that can be a "sink" for long-term unemployed persons the government would like to shunt off the unemployment stats. France doesn't do this; the UK has done a huge amount of it. (see these comments from the other day.)

ET has been in the forefront (long before McKinsey or the latest OECD report) in pointing out the importance of incapacity numbers in masking unemployment for propaganda purposes. Here is a diary I wrote about it last October.