But, as regards involuntary unemployment, the classical/neoclassical theorist relies on "Say's law" which declares, in fine, that "markets clear" in an unfettered, unregulated laissez-faire economy: every seller will find a buyer at some strike price, every buyer will find a seller at some strike price, and "every Jack shall have his Jill" in a "free" market. Sellers and buyers may refuse the strike price but this is taken as personal decision which causes the selling, or buying, to leave the economic model.

This theory, this "law" relies heavily on the absence of government regulation and assumes a developed economy without sabotage where labor strikes, as opposed to strike (mutually agreed upon) prices, are illegal.

Keynes tried to demonstrate in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that Say's law did not work in the real world of the 1930s Depression because of oversaving and private investor timidity, and that in consequence people could be thrown out of work involuntarily without being able to find acceptable new jobs.

This theoretic oddity of the classical and neo theories has, post-Keynes, had a strong influence on government policy. Post-Keynes, the tendency is for government to curtail and eliminate unemployment benefits and "make-work" government jobs, and to encourage the job-seeker to use his imagination, both considering the job search a career in itself and becoming-willing to accept lower wages, new "careers," or even relocation to another city or country in order to fulfill the expectation created by Say's "law"...which tends to broaden the "market" to a national or global level far beyond that which most real people are comfortable with.

Involuntary unemployment does not exist in agrarian societies nor is it formally recognized to exist in underdeveloped but urban societies such as the mega-cities of Africa and of India/Pakistan, given that, in such societies, the suddenly unemployed person must meet his survival needs, by getting a new job quickly at any strike price, entrepreneurship, or joining the invisible economy of the hustler.

From the narrative standpoint, whether the stories we tell ourselves, the stories related by Ehrenreich, the narrative sociology of Bourdieu, or novels of social suffering such as John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, involuntary unemployment certainly exists. Surprisingly, it is denied to exist in at least some classical and neo-classical, laissez-faire economic theories.

Even more surprisingly, effective job seekers (unlike Ms. Ehrenreich in Bait and Switch, who failed to get hired as a publicist on a pretend job hunt she performed to get material for her book) make a third step representing a "dialectical" advance over both classical/neo economists, and writers on the left: they narrate their search using the language of freedom of choice and taking responsibility (Bourdieu 2000) in a rather conservative register, and often seem to have more success when they do this instead of "whine."