How do you say "unemployed" in Japanese?

In Japanese, "unemployed" is 無職 (mushoku). It is a noun.

Listen to the pronunciation:

Illustration of unemployed from Noun Town

Pronunciation

無職 is written in kanji. Romanised as mushoku, it sounds roughly like "moo-shoh-koo" to an English ear.

Related words

Curated by Jack Ratcliffe

Practice 無職 and hundreds more Japanese words in the game.

Buy on Steam

Questions about 無職

How do you pronounce 無職?

無職 is romanised as mushoku. Say it roughly like "moo-shoh-koo" in English. Each Japanese syllable has even weight, so keep the rhythm steady.

Is 無職 formal or casual?

無職 is a neutral, everyday word that works in both casual and polite speech. The level of formality comes from the sentence structure around it, not from the word itself.

How is 無職 written in Japanese?

無職 is written using kanji. Kanji characters carry the core meaning; any hiragana or katakana that follow show grammatical endings.

This word is part of the vocabulary taught in the Japanese language learning game Noun Town, where words are introduced through play rather than memorisation.