| Undercapitalized | A firm that lacks sufficient resources to engage in normal operations. |
| Unemployment | A situation in which a person who is able and willing to work is not employed. |
| Unemployment benefit | A government transfer received by an unemployed person. Also known as: unemployment insurance |
| Unemployment compensation | Payments to a former employee who was terminated from a job for a reason not based on his or her fault. |
| Unemployment rate | The ratio of the number of the unemployed to the total labour force. (Note that the employment rate and unemployment rate do not sum to 100%, as they have different denominators.) See also: labour force, employment rate. |
| Unemployment, involuntary | The state of being out of work, but preferring to have a job at the wages and working conditions that otherwise identical employed workers have. See also: unemployment. |
| Uniform commercial code | A set of recommended rules to cover business transactions. They have been adopted (either wholesale or in modified form) to varying degrees by state legislatures in the United States. |
| Uniform limited liability company act | Set of standards for the regulation of limited ability companies to be voluntarily adopted |
| Unique bid auction | A type of auction in which the winner is the one with either the lowest or highest bid that is different from everyone else’s bid. A fee is generally charged to each participant who offers a bid. |
| Unique selling proposition | The differentiation that a product’s vendors can highlight at time of sale in order to increase customer interest. |
| Unit trust | A unit trust invests money in the stock market on behalf of a group of private investors that have put all their money together to invest and be managed by a fund manager. |
| Unquoted shares | Some companies choose to not be listed on the stock market, or they may not meet the listing requirements. Therefore the shares are ‘unquoted’. |
| Unstable equilibrium | An equilibrium such that, if a shock disturbs the equilibrium, there is a subsequent tendency to move even further away from the equilibrium. |
| Up Selling | Prompting customers to buy upgraded products when they had intended to buy something of lower value. |
| Update | To modify a database record to insert new information into it, or to delete it. Updating is either done in batch mode (fast and cheap) or on-line (slow and costly). |
| UPS | Uninterruptable Power Supply. A system of batteries that permits a mainframe to keep going even when the power fails. It is usually connected to a diesel generator that kicks in as soon as the batteries have begun to be needed. |
| Upsell | An attempt to increase a buyer’s spending by offering upgrades, additions or modifications for an additional fee. |
| Utility | A numerical indicator of the value that one places on an outcome, such that higher valued outcomes will be chosen over lower valued ones when both are feasible. |
