Macroeconomics Economics Commentary - patterns in America's unemployment statistics

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2nd Economics Commentry: Macroeconomics

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BRANGLIDOR


 Unemployment is defined as “individuals who are actively seeking for a job but cannot find one.” The rate of unemployment however is the number of employed individuals expressed as a proportion of the labour force. During the recent 2010 recession, the United States (US) faced an incredibly large unemployment rate. Despite the fact that America has mostly recovered from the recession, some sectors of the American economy have not yet left the ‘recessionary zone.’ In this article, the dilemma of American teenagers and blacks discrimination is discussed.

The statistics given from the article demonstrate a decrease in the rate of unemployment within the American economy. This is illustrated in the graph below as we can see the aggregate supply of labour closing the gap between itself (in blue) and the aggregate demand in order to achieve market equilibrium.

Statistically, this improvement can be seen by the drop in unemployment figures from 9.4% in December 2009 to 9.4% one year later in December 2010. Analysing the situation, numerous factors could have resulted in this dip. Primarily, gender discrepancy should be taken into respect. Females dominated industries have increased in size such as education and healthcare industries. Supporting my analysis, the rate of unemployment for women minimally fell by 0.1% unlike their male counterparts whom suffered greater losses. Males as a result saw a greater decrease in their unemployment percentages, falling by 0.8% in comparison to the female’s 0.1% probably due to discriminating reasons, academic motives or other social aspects.

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Another yet the most principle core dispute raised in the article is the fact that blacks and teenagers are being discriminated suffering from the highest rates of unemployment. Teens topped a high unemployment percentage of 25.4% whilst blacks a little lower tallied at 15.8%. Logically this makes sense for teenagers (assuming they are in the job searching range of 16 to 19 years old), in this age group most teenagers have had little professional experience as emphasis is placed on completing their high school diploma, meaning that the labour force is fundamentally less productive as these teenagers would have no ...

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