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A native speaker told me that "out of employment" is more informal than "unemployed", however, I don't know why and to what extent "out of employment" is informal.

I suspect that it's because "out of employment" is wordy and contains prepositions. This logic makes me feel that "take the place of" might be more informal than "replace".

So, is this logic valid? If it is, are phrases like "out of employment" or "take the place of" too informal for academic writing?

Here's the link to my corrected essay where this native ex-examiner gave me the comment.

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    In general, more 'formal' expressions contain more words than 'informal' ones, which are often abbreviated or shortened in some way. This is not a general rule, however. It would be impossible to create a 'rule' to tell a non-native speaker whether any arbitrary expression was formal or informal. Also, in your particular example, 'out of employment' is not really a common expression. Either you or your 'native speaker' have got formal and informal around the wrong way in your heads.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jul 26 at 7:01
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    That's surprising because ​out of work/​employment is listed in the common-pattern section in OD. (If you're interested, click on the tag "synonyms - work"). I have tried to learn it since it's there, and then my native IELTS teacher told me that it was kinda informal (I've attached a link to his comment in my OP). Now you tell me that it's not even common. I'm a bit overwhelmed; perhaps I need to wait for others' comments as well
    – An IELTS Learner
    Commented Jul 26 at 8:47
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    'Out of work', yes, but 'out of employment' is not so common.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jul 26 at 9:13
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    (Having seen the link) I'm really not sure why the person making the corrections implies that out of employment is too informal. Certainly unemployed would be the usual expression. Also, take the place of is not 'informal' - replace can be a synonym, but it can also mean 'put [something] back in its place'.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jul 26 at 10:03
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    I agree "out of work" is more common. “To be out of employment” is wordier than "unemployed", which is not a good thing especially in formal writing. I wouldn't say it is informal though, just clunky compared to its one word equivalent. To be out of work is idiomatic but might be considered too informal by some examiners. Avoid phrasal verbs in essays, but use them in emails to friends.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 26 at 10:06

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This NGram graph shows that "out of employment" was more common pre-1940. Generally, language has become less formal with time, so this would suggest that "out of employment" is rather more formal than "unemployed". Furthermore, expressions that are currently used less frequently than they used to be are generally regarded as old fashioned / more formal.

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    Who says "unemployed" is less formal? Because the chart shows a huge leap of the number of instances in the 1930s? Maybe that was due to the Great Depression in the US?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 26 at 10:15
  • Here's another chart from 1920 to 2012 with its focus on corpus of American English. Moreover the line for "out of employment" is negligible throughout the scanned period, proving only that it was rarely used in print.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jul 26 at 10:19
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    "Language has become less formal with time" is so vague it's meaningless.
    – the-baby-is-you
    Commented Jul 26 at 11:03
  • Google Ngrams arise from printed books, don't they?
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jul 26 at 11:38
  • @Mari-LouA I didn't say that unemployed is less formal: my comments relate only to "out of employment". I agree that the peak in the 1930s was caused by the great depression, but that's not at all what I was referring to. Note on the graph that "out of employment" is significantly higher in the period 1820-1930 than 1940 onwards.
    – JavaLatte
    Commented Jul 27 at 3:20

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