He's still unemployed, ______?

Concept

A question tag is a short question added to the end of a statement to seek agreement or confirmation. The rule: a positive (affirmative) statement takes a negative tag, and the tag must repeat the SAME auxiliary or 'be' verb used in the statement, together with the matching subject pronoun. If the statement has no auxiliary, the appropriate form of 'do' is used.

Application

1. Identify the verb in the statement: "He's still unemployed" expands to "He is still unemployed" — the verb is the 'be' verb 'is' in the present tense.

2. The statement is affirmative (positive), so the tag must be negative.

3. Repeat the same verb 'is' in its negative contracted form and keep the same pronoun 'he': "isn't he".

So the complete sentence reads: "He's still unemployed, isn't he?"

Cross-check

• A past-tense tag would need a past statement ('He was…'), but the statement is present, so a 'was'-based tag does not fit.

• A 'did'-based tag belongs with an ordinary action verb that has no auxiliary (e.g. 'He left, didn't he?'); here the verb is 'be', so 'do' is not used.

• A tag must contain an auxiliary plus a pronoun; a bare 'not he' is not a grammatical tag at all.