The article analyze: some topical issues of unemployment in ten selected highly developed countries. These countries are: Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Japan, Sweden, United States and West Germany. The analysis covers the period of 1960-1989 and it is based on international statistics compiled by such organizations as the OECD and the EC. The aim of the article is to show the scale, growth trends, and main structural problems connected with industrial unemployment in the above countries - individually and as a group. The article consists of three parts. The first part discusses the main terminological issues, and especially the concepts of unemployment, labour resources, employment, unemployment rate etc. The author points out certain differences between definitions used by international and national statistics. In the second part there are analyzed dynamics of labour rescourccs and unemployment. A special attention has been paid here to determining the proportions оf growth rates of: labour rescources, employment and unemployment. In his studies, the author used also relative measures of unemployment, i.e. rates of unemployment. The problems of unemployment structure are analyzed in the third part of the article. The analysis covers the main demographic and socio-occupational characteristics of the unemployment and the lenght of time during which they remain without work. The performed analysis allows to formulate at least three significant conclusions: 1) unemployment continues to rank high among three main problems of the highly developed economies (inflation, stagnation, unemployment); 2) despite the fact that the scale of unemployment has diminished in recent years about 7 persons from among every 100 economically active persons are without jobs; 3) among the unemployment seeking jobs the biggest chances have men aged 25-54, followed by women of the same age, and young persons under 24 years of age; the representatives of ethnic-racial minorities. Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 zostało dofinansowane ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę