Robby Lentine
April 17, 2014
Macroeconomics 122
After the
recession, many people have constantly had their eye on the unemployment
rate. Since this was such a big issue
throughout, people are happy that they have been able to watch it gradually
drop in recent years. As of right now
the unemployment rate stands at just about 6.7 percent or 10.5 million people
nationwide. This has remained relatively
unchanged since the beginning of 2014 however it has seen a decrease in 0.8
percent or approximately 1.2 million people since March of last year, 2013
(Employment Situation, BLS). As you can
see this is a positive downward trend and one can only hope it continues
towards the approximately 4.4 percent that it was before the recession hit
(Labor Force Statistics, BLS). The
unemployment rate has been dropping consistently ever since 2009 and so with this
steady trend I anticipate that in the coming year it will only continue to
decline.
There are,
however, differences between groups of people and so just looking at the total
labor force unemployment rate doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. For instance, the unemployment rate of teens
is 20.9 percent, whites is 5.8 percent, blacks is 12.4 percent, and Hispanics
is 7.9 percent. By looking at these more
specific statistics, more productive questions can be brought up on some
pressing issues. For example,
discrimination is still a common issue that is brought up often and so by
seeing these statistics people will ponder, “why is the unemployment rate for
blacks 12.4 percent while the unemployment rate for whites is less than half of
that at 5.8%?” In regards to these
rate’s trends, since the beginning of 2014 they have remained relatively the
same but have dropped significantly in the past year. Again, I can only anticipate these trends to
continue.
One
interesting point that I feel the need to point out is that the unemployment
rate statistics are not perfect indicators of the health of the labor
market. It fails to take into account
the discouraged workers and does not properly distinguish between full-time and
part-time work. Another issue is that
some people may not report their work status accurately to the BLS survey
(Mankiw, 2012, Ch. 15).
The
employment population ratio is at 58.9 percent at the moment. This ratio is rather self-explanatory as it
just describes what percentage of the country’s population is employed. Comparatively, this percentage has only
changed 0.4 percent in the last year but this growth from 58.5 percent to 58.9
percent can still be viewed as a very positive sign.
Lastly, the
labor force participation rate is sitting at just about 63.2 percent, which is
0.1 percent lower than what it was a year ago.
As you can see, this has remained relatively unchanged. It is very
interesting, however, to look at the differences across groups in this
category. For instance, for men ages 16
and older the labor force participation rate is 69.2 percent, while for women
ages 16 and older it at 57.2 percent.
The rate for women has only risen 0.1 percent in the last year but I do
believe that it will continue to rise in the coming years because of the whole
“equality” movement (Employment Situation, BLS). Nowadays more than ever, women are going out
and getting jobs themselves instead of staying at home and being housewives
like in the past. I anticipate that this
rate will continue to rise gradually in the next few years.
References:
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000
Mankiw,
Gregory. (2012). Principles of Macroeconomics: Sixth Edition. Chapters
15. Mason, OH. South-Western Cengage Learning.
The
Employment Situation. Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Retrieved from: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
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