Morgan Harvey
18 April 2014
ECON 122
The Bureau
of Labor Statistics (BLS) has the responsibility of measuring
unemployment. Adults age 16 or over are
surveyed into different categories, the first being employed which refers to
people who are working (full or part time) as well as those taking a leave of
absence for vacation, pregnancy, etc.
The second category covers those that are unemployed, which means those
that do not have a job but are able to work and have searched for a job within
the past four weeks. The last category
includes those that are not in the labor force because of college, children,
etc. The BLS measures this data every month for
about 60,000 households and produces a report called the Current Population
Survey (Mankiw, 2012, p. 298-9)
First, I will begin by talking about
the unemployment rate. According to
Mankiw (2012), the unemployment rate can be defined as “the percentage of the
labor force that is unemployed” (p. 299).
The unemployment has steadily decreased over the last two years,
beginning at 8.2 in March of 2012 and ending at 6.7 in March of 2014. This does not mean it did not fluctuate from
time to time, around December of each year it increased to decrease again after
a ~month. As far as different groups of
people are concerned, more women became unemployed while more men became
employed. Teenagers, whites, blacks,
Hispanics, and Asians had little change in their unemployment rates. Out of those, teenagers hold the highest
unemployment rate of 20.9% and Asians hold the lowest of 5.4% (Employment
Situation, 2014, p. 1). Lastly, those
that have not held a job for over 27 weeks, the long-term unemployed, decreased
over the year, meaning more were able to go out and find a job. I think for the most part, that these trends
will relatively stay the same. Teenagers
will continue to hold the fewest jobs because of our little motivation and need
for money. I believe Asians and whites
will lead the pack because of our education system and discriminatory
nation. Until citizens progress and give
equality to different races I don’t see the work place improving.
Second, I would like to speak on the
labor-force participation rate. The
labor-force participation rate is defined by Mankiw (2012) as “the percentage
of the total adult population of the United States that is in the labor force”
(p. 299) or in other words “the fraction of the population that has chosen to
participate in the labor market” (p. 300).
For white, blacks, Asians and Hispanics over 20 years the participation
increased the tiniest bit in March meaning more people participated in the work
force. However, for white and Hispanic teenagers
the participation rate increased by almost 2.5 and for black teenagers the
participation rate decreased a little (Employment Situation, 2014, p. 12-14). I also
concluded that those with less education had more participation in the work
force and those with more education had less participation in the work force (Employment
Situation, 2014, p. 15). I suspect that
with government legislation participation rates will increase across the board because
more jobs will be created. I was
disappointed to see that more whites participate than blacks, again hinting at
continued discrimination. I was also
surprised to see the comparison between education and participation in the
workforce. I am assuming that those who
are pursuing a college degree have less time to obtain a job than those who
decide to stop at the completion of high school.
In conclusion, the smallest
differences were seen in the employment-population ratio, which includes the
individuals of the working age that are both employed and unemployed
(“Employment-To-Population Ratio”, 2014).
There seemed to be a direct correlation between participation rate and
the employment-population ratio, when one increased the other increased as
well.
Works Cited
The
Employment Situation – March 2014. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved
from: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Mankiw,
Gregory. (2012). Principles of Macroeconomics: Sixth Edition.
Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
“Employment-To-Population Ratio. Investopedia.
Retrieved from: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/neutrality_of_money.asp
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