Tara Ahmed 7/9/2015 EMPLOYMENT ESSAY A nation’s unemployment rate, average workweek, labor force participation rate, and average hourly wages are all very important indicators for measuring the health of its economy. If labor force participation is declining and the unemployment rate is increasing at the same time, it is an indication that the economy is in serious trouble. Besides raw numbers, there are a number of factors which affect the overall composition and working of the labor force in a country. Labor force participation in USA is at an all-time low. A look at a compilation of articles and economic papers published in prestigious publications like Forbes, The Atlantic allows for deeper introspection about the impact of economic …show more content…
This in turn frees up the labor to be used in other sectors like service industry. When fewer people were employed by agriculture sector, due to efficient productivity, it caused structural unemployment, but it freed up more labor for another sector like manufacturing. That cycle will be repeated as manufacturing becomes more efficient and more people would be made available for say service industry. This therefore contributes to more productivity in the service industry. The paper presented in The Economist titled “Previous technological innovation has always delivered more long-run employment, not less. But things can change.” addresses the constant fear that technological advances will adversely affect employment opportunities. Technical advances will replace humans in work space and there will be massive unemployment in the future is a constant rhetoric by certain economists. This fear has proved to be baseless over the past centuries. When industrial revolution happened, there was massive structural unemployment in agricultural sector. Horses and mules were replaced by tractors. But as industries flourished, there was a huge demand for workers in large factories. Large scale manufacturing did not hamper the need for more workers. New technology opens up new job sectors and creates opportunities for a more specialized work force. There was massive investment in education and skill development. Early 20th
To begin with, there were many positive outcomes of the industrial growth since industrialization created wage increases, leading to the removal of poverty to a great extent. According to the document, “wages for unskilled laborers increased an average of 19.39% in consolidations and 16.97% in the independently operating companies. Wages for skilled labor increased an average of 13.71% from the “trusts,” while only rising 7.25% from independently operating companies” (Wright). In making this comment, it is clear that the number of workers and their wages have increased.
Through today's internet, we are able to utilize online shopping which drops the price of goods and promotes even greater competition by offering even more places to buy goods. This being similar to the decrease in prices and increase in goods during the Industrial Revolution. Another similarity to the Industrial Revolution is technology itself. Technology has been so mass produced that the prices have dropped significantly and now, nearly all “classes” of people have smartphones, similar to how workers during the Industrial Revolution could start to afford greater luxuries. Lastly the creation and elimination of jobs by technology parallels the factories of the Industrial Revolutions. Today the creation of computers is largely replacing the thinking and computing, as well as the completion of small tasks required by actual people in the workforce, but by the same token is opening up many more jobs in the technology field through repair,maintenance, and programming. Thus, like the Industrial Revolution where people traded skilled jobs for factory jobs, the job tradeoff in today's technological age seems fairly
The Depression was a gruesome time where people had worked relentlessly to survive. Unemployment today is as severe as it was in the 1930s, the unemployment rate of today is nowhere near the unemployment of the Great Depression. A pair of economists with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas created report called “A Historical Look at the Labor Market During Recessions”. The report is a graph of the WWII Recession, showing that the unemployment rate of a few years ago has past the unemployment rate of the WWII Recession. In 2008 the authors wrote the Unemployment Rate, it’s a report that describes the recessions of the past to the years of 2006 to 2011. The most of the recessions are above or near the average, but the highest recession is the Great Depression.
On the notorious “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929, Wall Street suffered a massive financial collapse due to heavy trading prices on the New York Stock Exchange. President Hoover claimed the U.S. business was “on a sound and prosperous basis,” but he couldn’t have been any further from the truth. The collapse of the U.S. economy, which was the largest in the world, created a global financial shockwave that could be felt across the globe. By 1931, the effects of Depression affected not only the U.S., but the world. “By 1933, 30 million people in industrial nations were unemployed, five times the number of unemployed four years before” (Starr 54). During the Great Depression, unemployment rates
Beginning with unemployment in the 2007-2009 recession, U.S. unemployment rates peaked at 10% as well as held 41 consecutive months at rates higher than eight percent (Lazear 1). The U.S. economy plummeted during this time; many attributed the shift to a large decrease in the number of employed workers. To be able to better understand the unemployment issue, we must first examine the form of unemployment faced by the U.S. economy. Many believe that the changes faced by the U.S. labor market
Nearly each advancement we made contributed to the continuous rising of our economy. The extreme increase among jobs contributed to America’s wealth and money, there was a significant drop in homelessness, and families were allowed to live comfortably. “The image in document three shows that factories will begin showing up in small towns and villages” (Document 3). Now that there are more facilities to work, there are more jobs available for the common man. Previously there was only farming, but companies began moving into villages, meaning there are more jobs. “The image in document four tells people that there are more positions to fill. With the brand new assembly line, companies need five people to complete the task, as opposed to one” (Document 4). The automobile conceived a whole new job route with the assembly line. People now only needed to know how to piece together one thing and that opened up five or more times more jobs as there were in the past. “Railroad travel was fast. Going to San Francisco from New York City took only six days” (Document 5). To move this fast a train would need a team to operate it. The new engines required many workers; this showed that there would be work opportunities on the rail road too.
Considering how long the humanity has been in existence, Finding Jobs is a extremely difficult concept. There are many arguments about how to find and keep a job in today’s world and ways to make it more practical. In “The Untouchables”, author Thomas L.Friedman discusses how the American fungible and non-fungible jobs are affected by the Globalization. In Hudson Institute’s article “Work and Workers in the Twenty-First Century”, their analysts show their opinions about the current trend of jobs in the near future and envision it in the next twenty-plus years. In both articles the authors discuss the topics of
Educating oneself about the economy is a rigorous task seeing as it has several different aspects to it. Unemployment and the related topics in the chapter sparked an interest within me. Fortunately, I was able to find an article that covered this topic in a state I’ve come to love- California. The article, “California adds 54,200 jobs in May; unemployment rate ticks up to 6.4%”, provides visual representation of the data stated and provides quotes and opinions from people among the Californian population. This produces additional support for the article. The fact that the situation is occurring in California, along with visual representations, gave reason for my decision in choosing this article.
Labor force participation rate is a ratio in which the labor force is divided by the civilian non-institutional population 16 years of age or older. During an economic recession, unemployed workers get discouraged and stop looking for employment, dropping the participation rate drastically. Labor force participation used to be relatively low, it decreased during the 1970s 1980s, and 1990s, rising in 2000 and declining once again in late 2000 (Bullard 4). “In early 2007, 66% of Americans were in the labor force. After the recession struck, participation tumbled, falling to 64% by 2012. By September 2015 it had hit 62.4% its lowest since 1977” (“The Force Awakens”). However, throughout this year the number of employment has risen as result of increasing participation from Americans into the labor force, pushing the rate back up .6%. This means that the economy has created 215,000 net new jobs in March, decreasing unemployment from 5.1% in September 2015 to 5% in April 2016 (“The Force Awakens”).
In “ Labor Force Insecurity and U.S. Work Attitudes..” Lalleburg discusses the soical, ecomonical, and political forces or job concerns within the United States.
Due to the never ending media of Donald Trump and the election we know how important jobs were going to be once he was elected. Trump’s want for jobs to be brought back to America and bringing firms back onto the United States soil rather than overseas has so far not seen a negative side in the first three months of his presidency in 2017. In March over 98,000 jobs were created among the private sectors, this number is much lower compared to the 219,000 jobs in February and 216,000 jobs created in January. With that being said the nations employment number did not significantly increase in March because 30,000 jobs were lost on the retail side, which is most likely due to seasonal unemployment. Over the past three
It’s conclusively the birth of inequality and the reduction in employment it’s a concern. In addition, workplaces are creating other complex issues for American families. Although, the rich American’s sustaining wealth, living a privileged life, the poor are at a poverty level striving to survive. Realizing the demands for jobs in the U.S. will provide opportunities the American families. Understanding the Americans object to jobs relocating to third world countries retaining employment in America will decrease the unemployment rate in the United States. However, it makes it impossible when there’s inadequacy of job when preserving employment or revenue to produce new jobs, because, jobs are outsourced to other countries. It’s problematic for
Farmers. Industrialization allowed to build new farm machinery decreasing the need for human labor what caused huge unemployment in rural areas. Those who decided to adjust their production to industrial trends had to pay fixed prices for transporting the products to the markets (George, 1982).
In any economy, no matter whether it is controlled by the government or by free markets, people need to work in order to support it. The government does not generate tax revenue by magic. There have to be people in that economy earning an income to ensure that the government continues to collect taxes. In a free market economy, the same applies because there are some services which only an organized government can supply (such as protection from extra-national threats), but there also those which the people get for themselves because of the working of the markets. In any scenario, unemployment is, at the very least, a drag on the economy, and it can be much worse. This paper examines how the unemployment rate in the United States is underreported, and how that fact effects the sluggishness of the present economy.
The United States is currently experiencing a slow recovery from the recession of 2008-09. The current unemployment rate is 7.7%, which is the lowest level since December of 2008 (BLS, 2012). However, this rate is believed to higher than the rate that would occur if the economy was operating at peak efficiency, and it is also believed that there are structural issues still underpinning this performance. For example, the number of Americans who have exited the work force as the result of prolonged unemployment is believed to be higher than usual. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO, 2012) notes that long-term unemployment of greater than 26 weeks is at a much higher rate than normal, which will have adverse long-run effects on the economy, since workers with long-term unemployment often find their career paths derailed.