Unemployment Essay

Jazmin Villegas Hernandez

Macroeconomics

Mr. Rust

2/19/19

Unemployment

Unemployment is the percentage of unemployed workers in the labor force. It is important to our nation because the nation loses its contribution to the economy in terms of the goods and services that could have been produced. When unemployed workers cannot purchase other things, that can lead to the unemployment of other workers because what they are producing is not being purchased.

Unemployment is important to our quality of life because if someone is unemployed, they are going to have numerous thoughts from how they are going to pay bills, to how they are going to provide for their families, to how they are going to put food on the table, and many more. Having these thoughts nonstop can lead to not being able to sleep, to sleeping too much, to being depressed, anxiety, stress, and many more issues.

In The New York Times, there is an article titled “U.S. Job Gains Show Employers Shrugged Off Government Shutdown.” In that article, it is stated that the unemployment rate went up to 4 percent. With the partial government shutdown, about 450,000 federal employees lost their job or were working without pay throughout the partial government shutdown. The people who lost their job completely and were unemployed struggled because they had no savings, so they stressed and had anxiety until they could get another job and be able to support themselves and their families if they had any.

Unemployment is controlled depending on what type of unemployment it is. Frictional unemployment is when not all unemployment is bad. With this type of unemployment, people are “in between jobs.” Cyclical unemployment occurs when an economy “cools” and is connected to the business cycle. Cyclical unemployment is the largest type of unemployment. Structural unemployment is when an economy’s structure changes because of technological advances and jobs become less necessary when a machine can do them. Seasonal unemployment means that when the season ends, workers are forced to move on because there will no longer be a job available. Some examples of seasonal unemployment would be a lifeguard, Santa Claus impersonators and park rangers, etc.

To be officially unemployed, a person must be 16 or older, not a full-time college student, completely jobless, and actively looking for a job. There are unemployed people everywhere, and it is very hard for them to provide food and a place to live for their family when they have no money. People should be able to get another job easily, it should not take them months to find one. A system should be placed where you can get a job fast enough to not be considered unemployed and that way nobody would be unemployed.