Meaning of Disguised Unemployment

Joan Robinson was perhaps the first economist who used the term disguised unemployment But she used this tem for the people taking to occupations with comparatively low productivity and income instead of occupations of high productivity and large income during periods of depression in the developed and advanced countries. But the tem disguised  unemployment is use in a different sense in the under developed countries. In the under- developed countries disguised unemployment refers to a situation where too many people are engaged in agriculture. A common characteristic of the over populated under developed countries is that a large majority of population draw their livelihood from agriculture . In Nurkse’s words “ There is disguised unemployment in the sense that even with unchanged techniques of agriculture could be removed without reducing agricultural output the same farm output  could be got with a smaller labor force.”