Unemployment in America: Historical Perspective - Article Example

According to the article, the recent financial crisis has brought permanent harm to the job situation in the USA. The article published in Feb. 2014 suggests that the American economy has not shown any stability as the job growth rate declined in December 2013 while the labor market was weak at the beginning of 2014. Discussing the gap between potential and actual output, this article refers to the calculations presented by Lewis Alexander of Nomura Securities by using labor market indicators. According to these reports, employed people represented 63 percent of the population in 2007, as compared to 59 percent of the 2009 population. The author thus justifies that the actual unemployment rate, as related to the actual output, is almost 1.1 percent higher than the given figure of 5.5 percent.

The article emphasizes the fact that many people in the country have stopped looking for jobs, which is falsely reflected in the decline of the employment rate. Therefore, the author suggests that it is important to persuade such long-term jobless people to hunt actively for jobs. In this direction, the article refers to the recent call from President Obama to too many corporate entities for encouraging such employment seekers. (Closing the Gap 2014)

My disagreement with the conclusion of the article
I do not agree with the author, as I believe that a job is a necessity for every responsible householder. Any person needing a job cannot afford to give up the efforts for looking at fresh employment opportunities until he or she gets the desired job. Further, the population figures relating to the employed percentage are not the correct representative of employment growth, as an increase in population can be mainly due to an increase in young adults, who are not old enough to seek any job. Read More