5. Why do we say that any measured unemployment can only be interpreted as  voluntary unemployment in the classical model?

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Review the meaning of labor market equilibrium in the classical model: Firms are hiring the number of workers they want to hire at the prevailing wage. Workers are supplying the amount of labor they want to supply at the prevailing wage. The prevailing wage is at the level that ensures these two quantities are equal. IIt therefore follows that, given the wage, everyone who wants to work at that wage are employed. Put another way, if people are not working they have chosen not to because the wage is not high enough for them.

Of course, a policy maker might not like the prevailing wage, or the quantity of employment at that wage, and so she may want to intervene. But this is not the same as saying there is involuntary employment.

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