Unemployment The Hardest Work - 784 Words

Unemployment: The Hardest Work Macroeconomics studies the behavior and the performance of the economy as a whole. Two of the main topics analyzed in macroeconomics are the long run economic growth and short run fluctuations in output and employment associated with business cycle. One of the problems evidenced over the course of business cycles is unemployment. This paper discusses how unemployment is measured, what are the different types of unemployment, and the cost of unemployment for a society. One of economists’ roles is to collect and analyze data, such as GDP, unemployment rate and inflation, in order to comprehend how an economy is performing and how it can be improved. When measuring unemployment, the U.S. Bureau of Labor†¦show more content†¦Higher rates of unemployment indicate that the nation is not using all the talents and skills of its people in order to improve productivity. However, the data collected is subjected to criticism. One of the reasons is that the BLS’s surveys count part time jobs as full time employments. Also, discouraged workers, people who left the labor forces because they were unable to find work, are not counted as unemployed. Therefore, critics say that the data collected understates the unemployment rate. There are three types of unemployment: frictional, structural and cyclical unemployment. Frictional unemployment includes workers who are in between jobs, searching for jobs or waiting to take jobs in a short period of time. For instance, people who left one job for another, or were fired and are looking for reemployment, or had to left work temporarily either because seasonal demand or personal situation. Frictional unemployment is inevitable but in some cases can be beneficial because some of the â€Å"workers who are voluntarily between jobs are moving from low-paying, low-productivity jobs to higher-paying, higher-productivity positions† (McConnell, 596). Structural unemployment includes workers whose skills are either not demanded or not sufficient for employment, and workers who â€Å"cannot move to locations where jobs are available† (McConnell, G29). Structural unemployment