Unemployment in the U.S - Essay Example

Unemployment in the U.S. What are the costs of unemployment? There are economic and social costs associated with unemployment and evaluating costs of unemployment needs to be viewed from these two perspectives (Case, 2007). There are three ingredients to the economic costs of unemployment, namely loss in production of goods and services, financial costs to the government, and loss of investment made on the human asset. The current state of unemployment is such that were we to rake into account part-time employees, who would like to work full-time, then one in six of the employee workforce in the U.S. is either unemployed or under employed, meaning that almost the production and goods or services is reduced by almost one sixth of the capacity (El-Erian, 2011).

In addition, with hardly any or no earnings government tax earnings from the unemployed workforce dwindles to almost nothing and welfare costs mount on the other side causing increase in government expenditure in support of the unemployed, which will have to come from borrowings (Homan, 2011). Falling back on evidence from studies on the impact of long-term unemployment as being experienced in the U.S., El-Erian 2011, comments that “This erodes an economy’s skills base and saps its long-term productive capacities”.

Unemployment has social costs too. These social costs include aspects related to the society and the family units that constitute the community. An example of costs to the society is the rise in crime rate, as there is an increase in resorting to criminal activities due to economic deprivation. Evidence from studies show that costs to the families is high due to the financial hardships of unemployment. These costs include the elements of poorer physical and psychological health, family conflict, and in extreme cases domestic violence and marital dissolution (Taylor, 2002).

Literary References Case, K. E. (2007). Principles of Economics. Eighth Edition. Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. El-Erian, M. A. (2011). Sleepwalking through America’s Unemployment Crisis. Project Syndicate. Retrieved May 23, 2011, from Web Site: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/elerian4/English Homan, T. R. (2011). U.S. Payroll Grew 244,000 in April: Unemployment at 9%. Bloomberg, Retrieved May 23, 2011, from Web Site: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-06/u-s-payrolls-increased-244-000-in-april-unemployment-rate-climbs-to-9-.

html Taylor, J. (2002). Unemployment and Family Life. In Peter Saunders & Richard Taylor (Eds.), The Price of Prosperity: The Economic and Social Costs of Unemployment (pp.65-85). Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Ltd.