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• The employed people: these are people with jobs. Employed people are
people who perform any paid work as well as those with jobs but absent from
work because of illness or vacation.
• People without jobs but looking for work and those are called the unemployed
people.
• With a depression in one industry, DD is less than SS, hence excess supply
of labor and the result is what we call Structural Unemployment.
Cyclical Unemployment
• exists when the overall economy suffers downtown or a recession.
• It is the level of unemployment that occurs even if the nation’s labor market is
said to be in equilibrium (fully employment).
• This NRU means that even if at equilibrium in labor market, a certain rate of
unemployment exists which is the natural rate of unemployment.
o This is due to the fact that there is a constant change in the DD and SS
for goods and services and consequently a change in the demand and
supply of labor which will cause some rate of unemployment to exist and
this represents the NRU.
Natural Rate of Unemployment (NRU)
2- The NRU is related to inflation:
o There is always a tradeoff (opposite relationship) between Unemployment
and Inflation in an economy,
o so that if to decrease unemployment to zero, inflation rises highly and a
serious problem arises in the economy.
Natural Rate of Unemployment (NRU)
• That is why economists don’t try to get NRU = 0.
• That is why NRU is defined as the lowest unemployment rate that a nation
can enjoy without risking or causing inflation.
Natural Rate of Unemployment (NRU)
• Thus the economy keeps in decreasing unemployment till that rate when the
price starts to increase and this achieved rate is the NRU, and it is found that
this NRU occurs at the nation’s potential GDP.
Public Policy to Reduce Unemployment
• Facilitate Job Search
• So if policy can reduce the time it takes the unemployed workers to find
new jobs, it can reduce the economy’s rate of unemployment.
Facilitate Job Search
• Government programs try to facilitate job search in various ways:
• The critics of these programs say that government should not get involved
with the process of job search.
• In fact the government has much more important roles to perform rather that
looking for jobs for the unemployed people.
Unemployment Insurance programs
• One government program that increases the amount of frictional
unemployment without intending to do so, is unemployment insurance
programs.
• Under this program, the unemployed who quit their jobs, were fired for
cause, or just entered the labor force are not eligible.
• Benefits are paid only to the unemployed who were laid off because
their previous employers no longer needed their skills.
• Under such programs, a typical worker will receive 50% of his former
wage for a period of 26 weeks.
Unemployment Insurance programs
• While such programs was intended to reduce the hardship of unemployment,
it tended to increase the number of unemployed people inside the economy.
• Not only that, but it makes unemployment less hard on workers in not too
much hurry to seek employment.
Minimum Wage Laws
Minimum Wage Laws : are government actions increasing the labor
wages above the equilibrium or market wage rates.
• This is due to the fact that as government sets minimum wages, the
quantity supplied of labor > quantity demanded of labor resulting in
excess labor, hence unemployment occurs.