Unemployment in America: Closing the Gap

TheEconomist.com

Link : http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596529-americas-labour-market-has-suffered-permanent-harm-closing-gap

I thought this article did a great job of making the point that it wanted to.  Over time, short term and long term unemployment has been going up and down. Recently, it has been improving, but not very significantly. I think that this rate is highly affected by the high percentage of people who were searching for jobs but just became discouraged and stopped. People who are not trying to find jobs are not included in unemployment numbers. I believe that the biggest reason unemployment is so low is because people give up hunting for jobs. The media and government leaders tell everyone how much of a problem unemployment is, so people do not even bother putting in the effort to search for jobs. This article was tough to interpret at first, but the author did a good job explaining himself to the reader. This article brought me closer to understanding unemployment and laws regarding it.

What i got from this article is that the unemployment gap is closing, but not significantly enough to get economists excited. Many people who have been laid off or fired are searching for part time jobs. They are not trying to get back into the labor market. While more people are finding short term jobs, the long term jobs are not being sought after. This, in turn, is hurting the job market.

The New American Dilemma

USnews.com 

Link: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/07/23/the-real-unemployment-rate-and-the-dearth-of-full-time-jobs

This article sort of tied in with my first article because it too mentioned the rise in part time jobs. When the media talks about creating new jobs, they are mostly talking about part time jobs. Not full time jobs. Last June, a report was put out that mentioned close to 300,000 jobs being created by the government. This is true, however, those were all part time jobs. In that month, there were almost 500,000 full time jobs that were destroyed. Many government reporters do not give the full story behind their reports. When the government does give positive reports on unemployment rates, there is a good chance that they are distorted. I later learned in this article about the numerous examples of the government giving positive reports on unemployment, but leaving out the real story.

Another reason for this skyrocket of part time jobs is because many companies and businesses cannot afford to pay healthcare for their employees. So, instead of hiring a full time worker and paying their salary and benefits, companies hired two part time workers. This way they could pay two part time salaries and would not have to pay for health benefits. Companies are only looking out for themselves in this situation and it does not help that the government has such strict policies with healthcare.

When people are out of work for so long, their skill set continues to shrink. This makes it even harder to find a long term job. Only 10% of people who have been unemployed for a long term eventually find full time work again. Unemployment is a huge problem in this country. There are a million different factors that contribute to it and that is why it keeps worsening. I think the biggest reasons for it are that people are not motivated to find jobs, people quickly give up looking for jobs, and the government has such strict policies with companies.