I think it varies. I have been walking along the 90% unemployment regions of Brussels a few years ago, and just knocking on a few random doors just "oh sorry you're not Tom" excuse for a look around, sometimes a conversation (I worked - and was bored to death - in the area, so for a month, that was my lunch hobby) (you wouldn't believe just how fertile ground conspiracy theories find here. Especially for a European country).
I hate to say it but unless I got entirely the wrong impression, you're wrong. For most of these unemployed their friends and families would take weeks or months to notice. Hell, the staff at the local supermarket will probably notice before friends will.
You see the same in the paper. They're isolated, unemployed, and there's large numbers of them. So it happens quite regularly that one of them dies - and if it's for a dumb or catchy reason, the papers go after it. Carbon monoxide poisoning is always reported. Someone who was ill - and this is a country with nearly-free healthcare before you say money - and didn't go to the hospital at all, then died, or someone who was seriously ill, but with little symptoms at first, got sent home, then died in their sleep. There's usually at least some mention of how they arrived at this conclusion and it tends to include how they were found. Depressingly often it's the smell or a loan collector, or- less often, thankfully - panicked kids who found this happened to their sole parent, then did something like running screaming outside, attack a police officer (not seriously, but enough to get them to "tell their mam"). Even if they have friends and family, that someone disappears from these neighborhoods without telling anyone is not exactly a rare event, usually related to crime they committed, so it does not raise any alarms.
So no, in most cases I don't think it would be visible at all. Some areas in large cities that nobody really goes voluntarily to would go quiet. And yes, the supermarket would notice.
I hate to say it but unless I got entirely the wrong impression, you're wrong. For most of these unemployed their friends and families would take weeks or months to notice. Hell, the staff at the local supermarket will probably notice before friends will.
You see the same in the paper. They're isolated, unemployed, and there's large numbers of them. So it happens quite regularly that one of them dies - and if it's for a dumb or catchy reason, the papers go after it. Carbon monoxide poisoning is always reported. Someone who was ill - and this is a country with nearly-free healthcare before you say money - and didn't go to the hospital at all, then died, or someone who was seriously ill, but with little symptoms at first, got sent home, then died in their sleep. There's usually at least some mention of how they arrived at this conclusion and it tends to include how they were found. Depressingly often it's the smell or a loan collector, or- less often, thankfully - panicked kids who found this happened to their sole parent, then did something like running screaming outside, attack a police officer (not seriously, but enough to get them to "tell their mam"). Even if they have friends and family, that someone disappears from these neighborhoods without telling anyone is not exactly a rare event, usually related to crime they committed, so it does not raise any alarms.
So no, in most cases I don't think it would be visible at all. Some areas in large cities that nobody really goes voluntarily to would go quiet. And yes, the supermarket would notice.