Discuss about the Economic Indicators Of Welfare.
The progress of a country and its overall welfare depends on the social, political, economic and other aspects. The economic conditions of a country and its performance over time depends on different economic indicators and their dynamics over the years. These indicators primarily include those of the growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product, the rate of inflation, the unemployment rate and other similar attributes of immense significance (Mankiw, 2014).
Of these economic indicators of welfare, the unemployment rate prevailing in a country holds immense significance as it shows the level of economic abundance of the people of the country and the general productive scopes and employment scenarios and threats in this aspect (Agénor & Montiel, 2015). Keeping this into consideration, the concerned report tries to analyse the primary types of unemployment prevailing in the economy of the USA in the contemporary period, thereby discussing the monetary and fiscal policies which the government of the country can implement in order to combat the concerned problems of unemployment in the contemporary period.
In the generalised framework, there are different types of unemployment, which occur in the economies in the global framework, the primary ones being as follows:
Frictional Unemployment- This form of unemployment occurs in the time period of transitions of workers from one job to another.
Cyclical Unemployment- The unemployment which occurs in an economy due to the economic downturns and phases in the business cycle of the economy falls under this category (Heijdra, 2017).
Structural Unemployment- This is a more serious and long-term unemployment which generally occurs due to structural changes in the economy, like that of decline of old types of industries, development of new industries with changed labour demand and long-term changes in the market conditions.
Seasonal Unemployment- The unemployment which arises generally in the industries which produce and supply at certain points of the years (Bernal-Verdugo, Furceri & Guillaume, 2012).
Voluntary and Involuntary Unemployment- The people in the labour force can stay unemployed willingly, which in known as voluntary unemployment. On the other hand, when the people, eligible as well as willing to do a job, remain unemployed in an economy, then this phenomenon is known as involuntary unemployment.
Natural Rate of Unemployment- This is the level of unemployment in the economy which occurs due to the supply-side factors of the country and its normal to be present in the country.
The globally dominant economy of the United States of America has over the years, experienced different types of unemployment in different periods of time, depending upon the situations arising in the economy of the country, attributed to both exogenous as well as endogenous factors influencing the economy of the country as a whole. The cumulative rate of unemployment of the country, over the years, can be seen to be as follows:
As is evident from the above figure, the rate of unemployment in the country can be seen to be increasing sharply (to nearly 10%) in 2008-2009, during the period of the Global Financial Crisis, post which the rate can be seen to have decreased steadily, although in the contemporary periods, the same can be seen to be nearly 4%, which denotes the presence of considerable unemployment related issues in the country in the present periods.
The different types of unemployment in the USA, which can be found to be primarily prevailing in the economy of the country over the years can be discussed as follows:
Structural Unemployment- This form of prolonged and hard-core unemployment could be seen in the country, especially during and post the period of Great Depression and also in the times of the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2009), when the lack of economic productivity and changes in the businesses policies led to huge loss of the existing job scopes and the same resulted in prolonged unemployment of a major share of the eligible work-force population of the country (Riumallo-Herl et al., 2012).
Frictional Unemployment- This type of unemployment is highly common in the economy of the concerned country, with the participants in the labour force of the country consistently changing and shifting jobs, thereby remaining unemployed for small spans in the transition periods.
Natural Rate of Unemployment- The natural rate of unemployment, in the USA, can be seen to have increased from historic rate of 5% to nearly 6.7% as per the estimates of the Federal Reserves, the monetary authority of the country (Fountoulakis et al., 2013).
Cyclical Unemployment- Currently, the type of unemployment which can be seen to be primarily prevalent in the economy of the USA, is that of cyclical unemployment. As can be seen from the pattern of job loss in the country in the recent period, nearly 438,000 jobs have been lost in the recent years, most of which can be seen to be from the construction and manufacturing sectors of the country, which in turn have been affected by the economic slowdown which the USA has been facing in the recent years.
These trends match with the cyclical form of unemployment which arises due to the dynamics in the business cycle in the country:
The downturns, signified by recessionary and stagnation situations leads to job losses, which are mostly temporary in nature and are recovered once the economy comes out of the economic downturn, as can be seen to be the scenario of the USA in the contemporary period (Larsen, 2013).
The problems of unemployment, experienced by the economy of the USA, can be addressed with the help of different economic policies (both monetary and fiscal) by the governing authorities of the country:
Unemployment can be reduced with the help of expansionary monetary policies in the form of increase in the supply of money. By decreasing the rate of interest, the monetary authority of the country can stimulate the increase in borrowings for investment as well as consumption purpose, which in turn can lead to stimulate the aggregate demand in the country:
As can be seen from the above figure, this decrease in the rate of interest can help in increasing investment through increased borrowings, which in turn can help in increasing the aggregate demand and supply which in turn raises the Real GDP (Wu & Xia, 2016). The increasing productivity is also expected to increase the demand for workers by the businesses, which in turn can increase the employment as a whole, in the country.
Apart from monetary policies, expansionary fiscal policies like that of increase in government spending or decrease in tax rates can help in increasing the economic abundance of people, thereby increasing their aggregate demand which in turn can help in increasing the aggregate supply in the country:
This in turn can result in the increase in the productive scopes, which in turn can lead to an increase in the demand for workers, thereby decreasing the problems of unemployment in the country, by overcoming the stagnate situation or economic slowdown which the concerned country has been facing in the contemporary periods (Rendahl, 2016).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the problem of unemployment is a persistent one in the contemporary period, in the otherwise developed and dominating economy of the USA and although different types of unemployment exist in the country in different periods of time, in the recent couple of years, cyclical unemployment is most commonly prevalent in the concerned country, mostly because of the phase of economic downturn in the business cycle of the country. The government and the monetary authority of the country can take expansionary monetary as well as fiscal policies in order to reduce the problem of unemployment by increasing the economic and industrial activities in the economy, thereby taking out the economy from the situation of stagnation and downturn, creating new job scopes for the population.
References
Agénor, P. R., & Montiel, P. J. (2015). Development macroeconomics. Princeton University Press.
Bernal-Verdugo, L. E., Furceri, D., & Guillaume, D. (2012). Labor market flexibility and unemployment: new empirical evidence of static and dynamic effects. Comparative Economic Studies, 54(2), 251-273.
Fountoulakis, K. N., Koupidis, S. A., Siamouli, M., Grammatikopoulos, I. A., & Theodorakis, P. N. (2013). Suicide, recession, and unemployment. The Lancet, 381(9868), 721-722.
Heijdra, B. J. (2017). Foundations of modern macroeconomics. Oxford university press.
Larsen, C. A. (2013). The rise and fall of social cohesion: The construction and de-construction of social trust in the US, UK, Sweden and Denmark. Oxford University Press.
Mankiw, N. G. (2014). Principles of macroeconomics. Cengage Learning.
Rendahl, P. (2016). Fiscal policy in an unemployment crisis. The Review of Economic Studies, 83(3), 1189-1224.
Riumallo-Herl, C., Basu, S., Stuckler, D., Courtin, E., & Avendano, M. (2014). Job loss, wealth and depression during the Great Recession in the USA and Europe. International journal of epidemiology, 43(5), 1508-1517.
Tradingeconomics.com. (2018). United States Unemployment Rate | 1948-2018 | Data | Chart | Calendar. Retrieved from https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
Wu, J. C., & Xia, F. D. (2016). Measuring the macroeconomic impact of monetary policy at the zero lower bound. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 48(2-3), 253-291.
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