The Impact of Unemployment

In this swiftly developed society, unemployment has been a serious social problem. Therefore, unemployment needs immediate attention. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the main consequence of unemployment and how it impact to the society. Firstly, this essay will briefly illustrate the current trend of unemployment in uk and the causes of unemployment. In the second part, it will focus on the negative impact of unemployment on certain aspects such as political unrest, decreasing of economy. Finally, this essay will briefly discuss the beneficial part of unemployment.

Lawson (2005:288) defines that unemployment is the people in the working age but do not have job. Unemployment is generally calculated by using the unemployment rate which is illustrated as the majority of people in the work force who are without paid job. In the United Kingdom, unemployment has been increased dramatically in recent years due to the economic crisis. According to the data from August to December 2014 of National Statistics (ONS), approximately seventy-three percent of people in age 16 to 64 are employed, however, nearly six percent of people which means 1.96 million labour force are out of work, this is a staggering number. Unfortunately, this figure is still increasing.

To alleviate this problem, people have found a number of factor responsible for the increasing unemployment. Stephens (1998:250) states that the major cause of unemployment was the dramatic reduction of heavy industries and the increasing of the high tech manufactory, so much more less of labour power is demand. It means that unemployment is primarily caused by technological changes. In the western countries, after industrial revolution, there was a swift growth in the science and technology which replaces a huge amount of demand workforce. Moreover, O’ Donnell (2002:206) points out that the working population increased by nearly 2.5 million between 1961 to 1970, as well as Stephens (1998:205) states that the supply of the workforce is beyond the demand. O’ Donnell also argues that the cause of unemployment is that the increasing working population of female. Furthermore, he also points out that the other reasons are the world slump followes OPEC oil increase in the 1970s and the recession of economy.

Unemployment has many impacts to the society in many aspects. Unemployment causes the family conflict. If a woman lost her job immediately, she is likely to be forced back into other roles such as mother and housewife. Conversely, if the husbands lost their jobs, it may have worse consequence. It is because women feel their role has been changing, and it is hard to be accepted by women. Hence, marriage is breaking down.

 Unemployment gives birth to political instability in country. Unemployed persons can easily be influenced by antisocial elements. They lose all faith in democratic values and peaceful means. They think that Government is useless which are not able to provide them work for living. Riots and demonstration are always happened in a country when the unemployment rate is greater than employment rate. Unfortunately, even a country will be on deathward way when people loss all of their trust in government. The current Greece is the best example to support this perspective, the employment in current Greece has been over 50 percent, which is a unimaginable figure. The civics start to use their weapon to against the government. The incumbent president is forced to stand down because Greek peoples have lost their trust to the current government. If a society goes to instable, it directly triggers the drastic rising of crime rate. Moore (1996:225) states that unemployment aggravate the gap between rich people and poor people, so that got to get the daily necessities illegally when they have no legal income to maintain living. For instance, Detroit have highest crime rate in USA, over 20, 000 crime has been recorded last year. Black people are rarely employed in Detroit but Detroit have highest population of black people in USA.

On the other hand, the state suffers from that. In many countries the government has to pay the unemployed some benefits. The greater the number of the unemployed or the longer they are without work the more money need to pay for welfare. Therefore, the nation got to deal with the lost income and decreased production and also with additional cost. It will also cause vicious circle, because government needs to cut cost on other places, such as national health and compulsory education. This will bring down the overall level of nation. Increased unemployment usually coincides with a decrease in the growth of GDP, since less people are now working in production, so presumably less goods and services are being created in the economy. So government will need to import more from other countries. The majority of the unemployed experience a decline in their living standards and are worse off out of work. This leads to a decline in spending power and the rise of falling into debt problems. The unemployed for example may find it difficult to keep up with their mortgage repayments. The government may raise taxes in order to balance deficit, however, it will be less people are willing to pay for tax, it goes into a vicious circle again.  Actually everyone is victims as a whole.