Job demand

About

Job demand is, broadly speaking, the number of people looking for jobs. It is approximately equivalent to a particular measure of unemployment rate, and effectively the opposite of job supply.

It can be expressed more precisely as either (a) the number of hours people are willing and able to work per week in order to meet their needs or (b) the weekly income a person needs and is therefore willing to work in order to obtain.

Significance

In a rhetorical twist, a report which found that Obamacare had reduced job demand was interpreted as "cutting jobs", implying that it was in fact reducing the job supply -- the exact opposite of what the report actually said, conflating the two opposing concepts. This was done via the rhetorical logic that people were quitting their jobs, therefore employment would be reduced, therefore there would be fewer jobs -- completely neglecting to mention that any recently-vacated positions would soon be filled by the vast job demand available at the time.[1]

Using the terms job supply and job demand rather than more commonly-used terms such as "jobs", "[un]employment", etc. should help prevent such misunderstandings, deliberate or otherwise.