Unemployment

In economics, a person who is able and willing to work at a prevailing wage rate yet is unable to find a paying job is considered to be unemployed. The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed workers divided by the total civilian labor force, which includes both the unemployed and those with jobs (all those willing and able to work for pay). In practice, measuring the number of unemployed workers actually seeking work is notoriously difficult. There are several different methods for measuring the number of unemployed workers, each with its own biases, making comparisons between methods difficult.

The history of unemployment is the history of industrialization. It was not considered an issue in rural areas, despite the "disguised unemployment" of rural laborers having little to do, especially in conditions of overpopulation.

The terms unemployment and unemployed are sometimes used to refer to other inputs to production that are not being fully used — for example, unemployed capital goods.

Impact on society and the economy

Unemployment rate (as a percentage of the labor force) in the United States. Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Some of the likely costs of unemployment for society include increased poverty, crime, political instability, mental health problems, and diminished issue in economics. A low rate of unemployment usually helps prevent mass poverty and violence.

Cost

Lacking a job often means lacking social contact with fellow employees, a purpose for many hours of the day, lack of self-esteem, mental stress and illness, and of course, the ability to pay bills and to purchase both necessities and luxuries. This last is especially serious for those with family obligations, debts, and/or medical costs, where the availability of health insurance is often linked to holding a job. Dr. M. Harvey Brenner, among others, has shown that increasing unemployment raises the crime rate, the suicide rate, and encourages bad health.[1] However, during the Great Depression, when unemployment rates exceeded 20% in many countries, the crime rate did not increase. Because unemployment insurance in the U.S. typically does not even replace 50% of the income one received on the job (and one cannot receive it forever), the unemployed often end up tapping welfare programs such as Food Stamps — or accumulating debt, both formal debt to banks and informal debt to friends and relatives. Higher government transfer payments in the form of welfare and food stamps decrease spending on productive economic goods, decreasing GDP.

Some hold that many of the low-income jobs (such as McJobs) aren't really a better option than unemployment with a welfare state (with its unemployment insurance benefits). But since it is difficult or impossible to get unemployment insurance benefits without having worked in the past, these jobs and unemployment are more complementary than they are substitutes. (These jobs are often held short-term, either by students or by those trying to gain experience; turnover in most McJobs is high, in excess of 30%/year.) Unemployment insurance keeps an available supply of workers for the McJobs, while the employers' choice of management techniques (low wages and benefits, few chances for advancement) is made with the existence of unemployment insurance in mind. This combination promotes the existence of one kind of unemployment, frictional unemployment.

Another cost for the unemployed is that the combination of unemployment, lack of financial resources, and social responsibilities may push unemployed workers to take jobs that do not fit their skills or allow them to use their talents. That is, unemployment can cause underemployment (definition 1). This is one of the economic arguments in favor of having unemployment insurance.

This feared cost of job loss can spur psychological anxiety, weaken labor unions and their members' sense of solidarity, encourage greater work-effort and lower wage demands, and/or abet protectionism. This last means efforts to preserve existing jobs (of the "insiders") via barriers to entry against "outsiders" who want jobs, legal obstacles to immigration, and/or tariffs and similar trade barriers against foreign competitors. The impact of unemployment on the employed is related to the idea of Marxian unemployment. Finally, the existence of significant unemployment raises the monopsony power of one's employer: that raises the cost of quitting one's job and lowers the probability of finding a new source of livelihood.

Finally, high unemployment implies low real Gross Domestic Product: first, we are not using our resources as completely as possible and are thus wasting our opportunities to produce goods and services. Much unemployment — called deficient-demand or cyclical unemployment — thus represents a profound form of inefficiency, sometimes called "Keynesian inefficiency." (However, this loss of production might instead be caused by classical unemployment or Marxian unemployment, which reduce potential output by restricting supply.) Okun's Law tells us that for the U.S., the economy misses out on about two percent of its potential output for each one percentage point of unemployment above the "full employment" unemployment rate or NAIRU (see below). Alternatively, this "law" says that as unemployment rises by one percentage point, say from 5% to 6% of the civilian labour force, the percentage of potential output that could have been produced but was not rises by about two points.

Benefits

Benefits for the entire economy arising from unemployment include that it keeps inflation from being high, following the Phillips curve, or from accelerating, following the Some say that slow economic growth and the resulting unemployment are actually good, since the constantly needed growth of the GDP cannot be sustained forever, given resource constraints and environmental impacts^{[citation needed]}. But others ask if it is fair to burden the unemployed (usually those at the bottom of the economic heap) with the costs of limiting the use of resources and the abuse of the environment. This suggests that we should seek ways to improve the efficiency of our resource management and environmental stewardship to attain growth and low unemployment in order to make sure that the burdens are distributed fairly.

Causes of Unemployment

There is considerable debate amongst economists as to what the main causes of unemployment are.

Non-capitalist economies

Open unemployment of the sort defined above is associated with capitalist economies. Preliterate ("primitive") communities treat their members as parts of an extended family and thus do not allow them to be unemployed — in the effort to preserve the group. In precapitalist societies such as European feudalism, the serfs (though clearly dominated and exploited by the lords) were never "unemployed" because they had direct access to the land (and the needed tools) and could thus work to produce crops. Just as on the American frontier during the 19th century, there were day laborers and subsistence farmers on poor land, whose position in society was somewhat analogous to the unemployed of today. But they were not truly unemployed, since they could find work and support themselves on the land.

Under both ancient and modern systems of slave-labor, slave-owners never let their property be unemployed for long. (If anything, they would sell the unneeded laborer.) Planned economies (often called "communist countries") such as the old Soviet Union or today's Cuba typically provide occupation for everyone, using substantial overstaffing if necessary. (This is called "hidden unemployment," which is sometimes seen as a kind of underemployment, definition 3.) Workers' cooperatives — such as those producing plywood in the U.S. Pacific Northwest — do not let their members become unemployed unless the co-op itself goes bankrupt.

Capitalism

On the other hand, under capitalism the individual profit-seeking employer does not have to bear the complete social costs of laying off or firing workers, so they are willing to live with (or even profit from) the existence of unemployment — unless employees are able to win good severance packages or protection from the government (such as restrictions on firing and lay-offs, although some doubt if even these help since they just make employers more reluctant to take the risk of hiring someone in the first place). (That is, there is arguably a market failure due to the existence of external costs of firing or laying-off of people.) On the "supply side," workers' lack of significantly positive net worth (beyond equity in a home or a car) makes it very difficult for them to go into business for themselves to avoid unemployment. Economist Edward Wolff estimates that in 1995 in the U.S., families with adults aged 25-45 in the middle income quintile could sustain their current consumption for only 1.2 months (or live at 125% of the poverty standard for 1.8 months) based on their financial reserves. Poorer quintiles of course had more difficulty.

Since not all unemployment may be "open" and counted by government agencies, official unemployment may be very low even under capitalism. Most poorer capitalist countries lack a modern welfare state and unemployment insurance so that it is very difficult to afford being unemployed for very long: they often end up taking jobs below their skill levels. Those who might be counted as "unemployed" in the rich countries end up instead being underemployed (definition 1) and not counted.

Others argue that unemployment actually increases the more the government intervenes into the economy. For example, minimum wages raise costs of doing business and businesses respond by laying off workers. Laws restricting layoffs make businesses less likely to hire in the first place leaving many young people unemployed and unable to find work.

The results of both actions lead to less productivity and higher costs to society as a whole. The results lead to not just higher unemployment but increased poverty. This is why the less market oriented countries of Europe often sustain substantially high unemployment rates in comparison to the United States; that is, government induced employment through policies designed to ?protect? the worker. The welfare state then responds with various benefits that are paid for by the middle and upper class which reduces their ability to consume and their incentive to work hard and innovate. Again, society gets worse off. Economists like Ludwig Von Mises, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Von Hayek, and many others not only believe that the welfare of society decreases with this kind of intervention but that these economic policies are not sustainable.

Demand, regulations, choice or "structural fact"

Various explanations have been proposed for unemployment. Keynesian economics emphasizes unemployment resulting from insufficient effective demand for goods and service in the economy (cyclical unemployment). Others point to structural problems (inefficiencies) inherent in labor markets (structural unemployment). Classical or neoclassical economics tends to reject these explanations, and focuses more on rigidities imposed on the labor market from the outside, such as minimum wage laws, taxes, and other regulations that may discourage the hiring of workers (classical unemployment). Yet others see unemployment as largely due to voluntary choices by the unemployed (frictional unemployment). On the other extreme, Marxists see unemployment as a structural fact helping to preserve business profitability and capitalism (Marxian unemployment). The different perspectives may be right in different ways, contributing to our understanding of different types of unemployment.

Though there have been several definitions of voluntary (and involuntary) unemployment in the economics literature, a simple distinction is often applied. Voluntary unemployment is blamed on the individual unemployed workers (and their decisions), whereas involuntary unemployment exists because of the socio-economic environment (including the market structure and the level of aggregate demand) in which individuals operate. (As is usual in economics, the sociological or social-psychological factors that help determine individual choices are ignored here.) In these terms, much or most of frictional unemployment is voluntary, since it reflects individual search behavior. On the other hand, cyclical unemployment, structural unemployment, classical unemployment, and Marxian unemployment are largely involuntary in nature. However, the existence of structural unemployment may reflect choices made by the unemployed in the past, while classical unemployment may result from the legislative and economic choices made by labor unions and/or political parties aiming to help workers. So in practice, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary unemployment is hard to draw. The clearest cases of involuntary unemployment are those where there are fewer job vacancies than unemployed workers even when wages are allowed to adjust, so that even if all vacancies were to be filled, there would be unemployed workers. This is the case of cyclical unemployment and Marxian unemployment, for which macroeconomic forces lead to microeconomic unemployment. For more details, see unemployment types.

Supply and demand

One of the main causes of unemployment in a free market economy is the fact that the law of supply and demand is not really applied to the price to be paid for employing people. In situations of falling demand for products & services the wages of all employees (from President to Errand Boy) are not automatically reduced by the required percentage to make the business viable. Instead whole groups of persons are laid off, with all the consequent social hardships. In the classical framework, such unemployment is due to the existing legal framework, along with "interferences" with the market by non-market institutions such as labor unions and government. On the other hand, for Keynes, Marx, and many others, many of the problems with market adjustment arise from the market itself (Keynes) or from the nature of capitalism (Marx).

Developing countries

It has been argued that in developing countries, unemployment is often caused by burdensome government regulation. The World Bank's Doing Business project[2] takes the position that excessive labor regulation increases unemployment among women and youths in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.[3]

Types of Unemployment

Cyclical (Demand deficient Unemployment) unemployment: When there is not enough aggregate demand for the labor.
Frictional: When moving from one job to another, the unemployment temporarily experienced when looking for a new job.
Structural: Experienced when the structure of an industry or skill demands changes in mainly:
- switching from a declining industry to a rapidly growing one.
- Pace of change in the tastes of people.
- Regional Structure of industry.
Technological: Caused by the replacement of workers by machines or other advanced technology.
Classical (Real-wage): When real wage for a job are set above the market-clearing level, commonly government (as with the minimum wage) or unions, although some (such as Murray Rothbard, America's Great Depression p. 45) suggest that even social taboos can prevent wages from falling to the market clearing level.
Marxian: when unemployment is needed to motivate workers to work hard and to keep wages down, to preserve profitability.
Seasonal: When an industry only is in demand certain times. For example, ski slopes, agriculture, Shopping Mall Santas, Snow plow services.

For a more detailed discussion, see the entry on types of unemployment.

Measuring unemployment

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics definitions

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides some definitions which are similar to, but not the same as, those of other countries.

The BLS counts employment and unemployment (of those over 16 years of age) using a sample survey of households.[4] In BLS definitions, people are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey week. This includes not only regular full-time year-round employment but also all part-time and temporary work. Workers are also counted as "employed" if they have a job at which they did not work during the survey week because they were:

On vacation;
Ill;
Taking care of some other family or personal obligation (for example, due to child-care problems);
On maternity or paternity leave;
Involved in an industrial dispute (strike or lock-out); or
Prevented from working by bad weather.
Medical problems

Typically, employment and the labor force include only work done for economic gain. Hence, a homemaker is neither part of the labor force nor unemployed. Nor are full-time students nor prisoners considered to be part of the labor force or unemployment. The latter can be important. In 1999, economists Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger estimated that increased incarceration lowered measured unemployment in the United States by 0.17 %age points between 1985 and the late 1990s. In particular, as of 2005, roughly 0.7% of the US population is incarcerated.

On the other hand, individuals are classified as "unemployed" if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available for work. The unemployed includes all individuals who were not working for pay but were waiting to be called back to a job from which they had been temporarily laid off.

Finally, it is possible to be neither employed nor unemployed by BLS definitions, i.e., to be outside of the "labor force." These are people who have no job and are not looking for one. Many of these are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force. Still others have a physical or mental disability which prevents them from participating in labor force activities.

Children, the elderly, and some individuals with disabilities are typically not counted as part of the labor force in and are correspondingly not included in the unemployment statistics. However, some elderly and many disabled individuals are active in the labor market.

In the early stages of an economic boom,unemployment often rises. This is because people join the labor market (give up studying, start a job hunt, etc.) because of the improving job market, but until they have actually found a position they are counted as unemployed. Similarly, during a recession, the increase in the unemployment rate is moderated by people leaving the labor force.

Note: as of March 1st, 2005 unemployment statistics will be derived from three sources. These sources include the Current Population Survey, a statewide survey of businesses known as the Current Employment Statistics Survey, and state unemployment insurance claims.

The accuracy of unemployment statistics

The unemployment rate may be different from the impact of the economy on people. First, the unemployment figures indicate how many are not working for pay but seeking employment for pay. It is only indirectly connected with the number of people who are actually not working at all or working without pay. Second, in the United States those who work as little as one hour a week for payment are considered employed, even if they wish to work more. Therefore, critics believe that current methods of measuring unemployment are inaccurate in terms of the impact of unemployment on people as these methods do not take into account:

Those who have lost their jobs and have become discouraged over time from actively looking for work.
Those who are self-employed or wish to become self-employed, such as tradesmen or building contractors or IT consultants.
Those who have retired before the official retirement age but would still like to work.
Those on disability pensions who, while not possessing full health, still wish to work in occupations suitable for their medical conditions.
Those who work for payment for as little as one hour per week but would like to work full-time. These people are "involuntary part-time" workers.
Those who are underemployed, e.g., a computer programmer who is working in a retail store until he can find a permanent job.

On the other hand, the measures of employment and unemployment may be "too high." In some countries, the availability of unemployment benefits can inflate statistics since they give an incentive to register as unemployed. Homemakers and other people who do not really seek work may choose to declare themselves unemployed so as to get benefits; people with undeclared paid occupations may try to get unemployment benefits in addition to the money they earn from their work. Conversely, the absence of any tangible benefit for registering as unemployed discourages people from registering.

However, in countries such as the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan and the European Union, unemployment is measured using a sample survey (akin to a Gallup poll). According to the BLS, a number of Eastern European nations have instituted labor force surveys as well. The sample survey has its own problems because the total number of workers in the economy is estimated based on a sample rather than a census. So many economists look to the survey of employers (in U.S.) to get a better estimate of the number of jobs created or destroyed.

Due to these deficiencies, many labor market economists prefer to look at a range of economic statistics such as:

Labor market participation rate (the percentage of people aged between 15 and 64 who are currently employed or searching for employment)
The total number of full-time jobs in an economy
The number of people seeking work as a raw number and not a percentage
The total number of person-hours worked in a month compared to the total number of person-hours people would like to work

Situation in the United States

There are two permanent government projects conducted by the United States Census Bureau (within the United States Department of Commerce) and/or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (within the United States Department of Labor) that gather employment statistics monthly. One is the Current Population Survey (CPS) [5] which surveys 60,000 households: it is used in calculating the unemployment rate. The other is the Current Employment Statistics (CES) [6] which surveys 300,000 employers.

These two sources have different classification criteria, and usually produce differing results. As noted, most economists these days see the CES as a more accurate estimate of the state of the job market. Because the CES only surveys employers, it does not produce an unemployment rate statistic.

Though many people care about the number of unemployed (8.0 million in the U.S. in December 2004), economists typically focus on the unemployment rate (4.7% in March 2006). This corrects for the normal increase in the number of people working for pay or seeking work due to population increases and increases in the paid labor force relative to the population — and thus the normal increase in the number of unemployed workers.

It is important to note that these statistics are for the U.S. economy as a whole, hiding variations among groups. For December 2004 and May 2005 in the U.S., respectively the unemployment rates for the major worker groups were as follows:

adult men: 4.9 % (Dec.); 4.4 % (May)
adult women: 4.7 % (Dec.); 4.6 % (May)
Caucasians: 4.6 % (Dec.); 4.4 % (May)
Asians: 4.1 % (Dec.); 3.9 % (May)
Hispanics or Latinos (all races): 6.6 % (Dec.); 6.0 % (May)
African American Descent: 10.8 % (Dec.); 10.1 % (May)
teenagers: 17.6 %; 17.9 % (May)

These percentages represent the usual rough ranking of these different groups' unemployment rates, though the absolute numbers normally change over time with the business cycle. They come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Clicking on this link will lead to a pdf file with up-to-date numbers.)

Aiding the Unemployed

The most developed countries have aids for the unemployed as part of the welfare state. These unemployment benefits include unemployment insurance, welfare, unemployment compensation and subsidies to aid in retraining. The main goal of these programs is to alleviate short-term hardships and, more importantly, to allow workers more time to search for a good job.

In the U.S., the unemployement insurance allowance one receives is based solely on previous income (not time worked, family size, etc.) and usually compensates for one-third of one's previous income. To qualify, one must reside in their respective state for at least a year and, of course, work. While 90% of citizens are covered on paper, only 40% could actually receive benefits as unemployment is based on an antiquated system created in the Social Security Act of 1935. In cases of highly seasonal industries the system provides income to workers during the off seasons, thus encouraging them to stay attached to the industry. To calculate the unemployment insurance benefits you might receive, see the page at the Economic Policy Institute.

New Deal in USA, 1933-40

In the United States, the New Deal made relief of the unemployed a high priority, with many different programs. The goal of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was to employ most of the unemployed people on relief until the economy recovered. FERA/WPA director Harry Hopkins testified to Congress in January 1935 why he set the number at 3.5 million, using FERA data. At $1200 per worker per year he asked for and received $4 billion.

"On January 1 there were 20 million persons on relief in the United States. Of these, 8.3 million were children under sixteen years of age; 3.8 million were persons who, though between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five were not working nor seeking work. These included housewives, students in school, and incapacitated persons. Another 750,000 were persons sixty- five years of age or over. Thus, of the total of 20 million persons then receiving relief, 12.85 million were not considered eligible for employment. This left a total of 7.15 million presumably employable persons between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five inclusive. Of these, however, 1.65 million were said to be farm operators or persons who had some non-relief employment, while another 350,000 were, despite the fact that they were already employed or seeking work, considered incapacitated. Deducting this two million from the total of 7.15 million, there remained 5.15 million persons sixteen to sixty-five years of age, unemployed, looking for work, and able to work. Because of the assumption that only one worker per family would be permitted to work under the proposed program, this total of 5.15 million was further reduced by 1.6 million--the estimated number of workers who were members of families which included two or more employable persons. Thus, there remained a net total of 3.55 million workers in as many households for whom jobs were to be provided." [Howard p 562, paraphrasing Hopkins]

The WPA did not quite reach 3.5 million--its maximum was 3.3 million in November 1938. Worker pay was based on three factors: the region of the country, the degree of urbanization and the individual's skill. It varied from $19/month to $94/month. The goal was to pay the local prevailing wage, but to limit a person to 30 hours or less a week of work. About 75 percent of WPA employment and 75 percent of WPA expenditures went to public infrastructure, such as highways, airports, parks and libraries.

The WPA had numerous critics who said that political considerations helped decide which states received the most funding. Civil rights leaders often complained that African Americans were proportionally underrepresented. In New Jersey, they argued, "In spite of the fact that Negroes indubitably constitute more than 20 per cent of the State's unemployed, they composed 15.9 per cent of those assigned to W.P.A. jobs during 1937." [Howard 287] Nationwide in late 1937, 15.2% were African American. The NAACP magazine Opportunity hailed the WPA: [February, 1939, p. 34. in Howard 295]

It is to the eternal credit of the administrative officers of the WPA that discrimination on various projects because of race has been kept to a minimum and that in almost every community Negroes have been given a chance to participate in the work program. In the South, as might have been expected, this participation has been limited, and differential wages on the basis of race have been more or less effectively established; but in the northern communities, particularly in the urban centers, the Negro has been afforded his first real opportunity for employment in white-collar occupations

When unemployment disappeared in World War II, and almost no one was eligible, Congress shut down the WPA in late 1943.

The statistics show:

Families on Relief 1935-41

Relief Cases 1936-1941
monthly average in 1,000
	1936	1937	1938	1939	1940	1941
Workers employed:
WPA	1,995	2,227	1,932	2,911	1,971	1,638
CCC and NYA	712	801	643	793	877	919
Other federal work projects	554	663	452	488	468	681
Public assistance cases:
Social security programs	602	1,306	1,852	2,132	2,308	2,517
General relief	2,946	1,484	1,611	1,647	1,570	1,206
	5,886	5,660	5,474	6,751	5,860	5,167

Total families helped
Unemployed workers (Bur Lab Stat)	9,030	7,700	10,390	9,480	8,120	5,560
coverage (cases/unemployed)	65%	74%	53%	71%	72%	93%

source: Donald S. Howard, WPA and Federal Relief Policy. 1943 p 34.

Uemployment
% labor force
1933		24.9
1934		21.7
1935		20.1
1936		16.9
1937		14.3
1938		19.0
1939		17.2
1940		14.6
1941		9.9
1942		4.7
1943		1.9
1944		1.2
1945		1.9

source: Historical Statistics US (1976) series D-86

External links

U.S. Employment Offices by State - info on qualifying and registering for unemployment compensation, office locations, etc.
Current Population Survey Home Page
Unemployment - 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article
Doing Business project @ World Bank
"Influence of the Social Environment on Psychology: The Historical Perspective," in Stress and Mental Disorder, ed. James E. Barrett (NY: Raven University Press, 1979)
Katz, Lawrence F. and Alan B. Krueger. 1999. The High-Pressure U.S. Labor Market of the 1990s. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 1: 1-65.
Wolff, Edward N. 1998. Recent Trends in the Size Distribution of Household Wealth. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 12(3) Summer: 131-50.
Andre, Richard. ebook 2005. Chomeur, pourquoi ? Des artisans de la civilisation qui s'ignorent. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/chomeur-pourquoi/ A reflexion essential as well for unemployed people as for salaried people, to be free from social breaking. In french, but an universal scientifical approch.