Pertanyaan

Unemployment Each country must face unemployment. Unemployment occurs when a person who is actively searching for employment is unable to find work. Unemployment is often used as a measure of the health of the economy. Having a job provides people with some income security in a world where the future is uncertain. Because money often measures success, not having a job can make people feel worthless. There are four main types of unemployment. They have different causes why people become unemployment. One of the types is frictional unemployment. This kind of unemployment is caused by people being between jobs. An example is when people resign their jobs because they want to move to a different part of the country. These people are unemployed out of choice, and are frictionally unemployed while they are searching for new jobs. If frictionally unemployed people struggle to find new jobs, it is usually because they do not have sufficient information on the available job opportunities. The second is seasonal unemployment. It happens because some parts of the economy need labour only during certain parts of the year. For example, lifeguards at beaches are needed only during summer. It these lifeguards do not have jobs in winter, they are part of the seasonally unemployed. This also happens in agriculture, where more workers are needed during harvest times. While this kind of unemployment can cause hardship for people, they are generally sure of jobs when the season of employment arrives again. The third one is cyclical unemployment. It is caused by changes in the level of aggregate output in the economy. All economies go through cycles of booms and recessions. During boorms, unemployment will fall, but during recessions unemployment is likely to rise. When aggregate output shrinks, firms will retrench workers. This kind of unemployment is more serious because it is difficult to predict how long a recession will last and how long people will remain unemployed. The last type is structural unemployment. It is caused when there is a lasting change in the demand for labour in sectors of the economy. For example, if the gold price falls, many gold mines will lose money and will have to close down. As a result, demand for labour will decline in the mining sector, compared with other sectors like manufacturing or financial services. Mine workers will lose their jobs and will not able to find new jobs in the mining sector. Jobs may be available in other sectors but the mine workers will often not have the right skills for those jobs. For example, to get a job in the financial services sector, a person needs to have a good understanding of economics, while mine workers are trained in other skills, such as drilling. When there is structural unemployment, there is great demand for labour in some sectors, but unemployed people who can supply that labour cannot fill the available jobs because they do not have the skills required for that sector. Structural unemployment can also occur when people lose their jobs because of technological change, which makes certain products obsolete. For example, when computers replaced typewriters, workers in typewriter factories became unemployed, and they did not have the skills to work in computer factories. Structural unemployment can also happen when consumers change their lifestyles permanently, for example, as people switch from using paraffin to using electricity. By knowing the types of unemployment and the causes, the govemment can find solution for unemployment. Frictional unemployment depends on people's own choices and seasonal unemployment depends on the time of the year, so there is little that the government can do about these. However, cyclical unemployment can be solved by any economic policy. Structural unemployment needs different solutions, such as encouraging people to start their own businesses or providing the unemployed with the proper skills training. Questions: 3. When does unemployment occur?