this loss depends on the risk of unemployment ie the risk of becoming and staying unemployed and the degree of mitigation against these losses provided by government transfers unemployment benefits and social assistance in the event of unemployment conditional on the assumption that all transitions take place between employment and unemployment data on unemployment duration are used to measure the monthly probability of becoming unemployed as well as the average expected duration of completed unemployment spells in months which is the inverse of the probability of finding a job once unemployed the product of the two elements provides a measure of the overall unemployment risk ie the proportion of time that a worker can expect to spend on average in unemployment