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Starting from a recent polemical debate over the use of the notion of “non-employment ” rather than “unemployment ” in an economic article, which generated a good deal of controversy, this article serves as a reminder of the context in which the category of “unemployment ” was invented and of the fact that we are now witnessing the somewhat symmetrical process of its “deconstruction ”, a process of which the recurring debate about the statistical assessment of unemployment is only one of the symptoms.