What does the term 'labour force' generally mean in an economy?

Concept: In economics, the labour force (or economically active population) is defined as everyone of working age who is either currently employed, or unemployed but actively searching for and available to take up work. It is the pool of people actually participating in, or seeking to participate in, the production of goods and services — not simply everyone alive, and not simply everyone without a job.

Application: The group being asked about here must combine two components: people who already hold a job, and people who have no job but are actively looking for one. Naming both together — employed persons plus those actively looking for work — matches this definition exactly, since neither piece alone (just the employed, or just the job-seekers) equals the labour force.

Why the other descriptions don't fit:

• Counting only people without a job describes unemployment on its own, not the labour force — it leaves out everyone who is currently working.

• Counting the entire population, employed and unemployed together, is too wide — it would include children, the retired, students and others outside the working-age, economically active group, none of whom form part of the labour force.

• People who are able to work but have stopped actively searching for a job sit outside the labour force altogether — this describes the group excluded from it, not the group that composes it.

So the labour force is the sum of the employed and the job-seeking unemployed — the working and work-seeking population of an economy.