Unemployment

Unemployment affects people differently. Some face financial stress, even to the point of losing their homes. Others can be so depressed that they become emotionally and socially unstable, even to the point of committing crimes. These effects of unemployment have many causes. The main reasons for unemployment are improvement of technology, recession, and globalization. Unemployment has been increasing over the past ten years. It has more than doubled since January of 2000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the recent report of the employment situation in October of 2010 shows that the unemployment rate is the same since May, at 9.6%. However, the rate is disproportionate among the major worker groups. The unemployment rate for adult men is 9.7%, adult women is 8.7%, teenagers is 27.1%, whites is 8.8%, blacks is 15.7%, Hispanics is 12.6%, and Asians is 7.1%. About 6.2 million people are unemployed long-term, and 41.8% of the unemployed have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer (United States. Dept. of Labor). Therefore, the unemployment situation leads to the difficulties that affect people's daily lives.
Having no job affects people emotionally, financially, and socially. Emotionally, they are worried about the survival of themselves and their families. That causes a lot of stress for people. Some people lose their homes and their insurance. Some are even forced to take any job that comes along, which may not be able to meet all of the financial needs. For example, it might be hard to pay the bills, the house payment, food, gas, etc. Some people are not able to work because there is a flood of available employees in that job due to businesses closing. People might face a lot of little personal financial stresses in addition to the big ones. Worry, depression, sadness, even anger, is all felt by unemployed folks. Financially, unemployment benefits help a bit, but they run out eventually. If the person cannot find a new job, he may go into debt, lose a home, and have no way out but perhaps filing bankruptcy. Socially, I would imagine it is an embarrassing situation for some people to be unemployed. They may feel as though others think it is their fault for their unemployment, but that is not necessarily true if their job was lost due to the economy. Since the unemployment rate is still high, it has different effects on people. Therefore, people and the government should find out the causes in order to reduce the unemployment rate. The rise in the unemployment rate has many possible causes. The first possible cause is the improvement of technology. Changes in technology have altered the workplace. For example, automation and the use of machines and computers have replaced the need for people. So, less of a physical, human workforce is required to make a business operate than in the past. For instance, if a factory has machines to do the work on an assembly line to produce a product, the factory would need to hire fewer people for the job. Computers and tools like the internet also can affect unemployment. Likewise, an ATM machine can replace a bank teller, and online teachers can take many more students at once than in a traditional classroom. Everyone is getting their news on the internet, so putting a paper together does not need many workers anymore. The second possible cause for the rise in the unemployment rate is the recession. During these years, we have seen a lot of negative economic problems. The stock markets began crashing. Major industries, such as the banking industries and auto industries, needed the government to help them out financially and bail them out of debt. Companies started going under, began downsizing, or even going out of business completely, like the Circuit City stores. Besides that, there is also a collapse in the housing markets. There are tons of foreclosures on homes because people could not pay their mortgages and lost their homes. If businesses are collapsing or downsizing, then people cannot find jobs. The third possible cause of the unemployment rate is globalization. It is cheaper to produce goods and services in foreign countries. We might save production costs, but jobs are going outside of the United States. Places like India and China, for example, can produce goods for a cheaper price than we can in the U.S, but outsourcing jobs and productions of goods and services to other countries means the workers in the U.S are not getting those jobs. Similarly, customer service calls often get directed overseas. Moreover, one industry in which globalization is evident is the clothing manufacturing industry. Clothing manufacturers make their goods for a lot less money by having them outsourced to other countries where items are made more cheaply. The impact of the causes of unemployment is still being felt. If issues of improvement of technology, recession, and globalization are not addressed, the problem is going to continue. The government needs to begin to work to create jobs for the people in our country.
There are several possible solutions to stop the problem of unemployment in the U.S. First, the government should help the economy by not spending money on the current war in the Middle East. Instead of spending money on the war, the government should spend money on creating jobs. The government could create job programs or job training programs for people who lost jobs due to downsizing or industries going out of business. It seems to be a productive way to spend money. Therefore, another possible solution is to stop outsourcing our goods and services to other countries. It may be cheaper for business owners to do so, but in the end, it costs our economy in the form of leaving the workers unemployed. Also, rather than getting products from foreign countries, getting the same products in the U.S will force companies to build factories in the country, which will create jobs for people. The problem we are currently facing with the high unemployment rate can certainly be fixed. It requires some restructuring of current ideas, and money to be spent on fixing the problem which is affecting the economy as well as the job market.
The economy is a volatile system that seems to easily shift from good to bad very quickly. While Karl Marx and Adam Smith have differing views on the best way to run an economy, both have theories that could help the economy function best; however, their ideas might bring up problems. Based on Karl Marx's idea, the capitalist system only worked because of the exploitation of the workers, and he argued for the workers to eventually throw off the employer in revolutionary style (Marx 359-361). With that being said, his philosophy would be that the economy works best when the workers are exploited, but this is not a good system. His idea has been shown to fail by looking at the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union overthrew their king and ended up with a Communist government. While arguably in this economic system, everyone got the same benefits, in fact, there were a few government leaders that basically had most of the wealth of the country, and most of the people were starving. In other words, no one really benefited from it unless he was a leader. On another hand, Adam Smith strongly believed in capitalism. Capitalism is one concept that is discussed as helping to keep the economy strong. Basically, Smith acknowledged an individual's own self-interest in business, and that this self-interest drove the economy and benefited society as a whole (Smith 347-348). In short, everyone is trying to be the best in business, and this is good because it increases the competition and quality of product. However, with the economy being uncertain and the cost of doing business increasing, business owners might decide that it is not worth it to themselves or their bottom line to bring on new workers. The businesses will no longer be profitable. If businesses are cutting costs and not bringing on new employees, then that increases unemployment. Also, it could result in worker exploitation. Business owners squeeze their employees to work fewer hours and provide fewer benefits because that increases their own wealth. Even though Marx’s and Smith’s view could generate problems, they also have ideas to help the economy run well.
According to Rick Newman, “The pace of job creation is so slow that at this rate, we won’t get back to pre-recession levels for 20 years.” Any job-seeker is aware that the U.S economy has shrunk in all areas. Well-paying entry-level jobs, as well as once “safe” careers, have become unreliable. Even so, the employment sectors of financial services, construction, and state and local governments have seen the major cutbacks. As a result, 71,000 construction jobs have been lost in 2010, and 1.9 million jobs have been lost since 2007. Since many people are unemployed, they do not have money to build or remodel their houses, so the construction jobs are sinking to the bottom. In state and local government, 260,000 jobs have been lost in 2010, compared to the loss of 225,000 jobs since 2007. Loss of jobs in state and local government is due to running out of money and tax revenues because there are major cuts. Accounting and bookkeeping also go down because companies collapse and run out of business, so there is 37,000 jobs have been lost since 2010 and 86,000 since 2007 (Newman). Thus, one difficulty in a struggling economy is people have to move. For example, some unemployed in these fields have to move to new places where there are different environments and healthy industries. Moving or pursuing education for a new skill is expensive. While the people are unemployed, they have no job to pay for the expenses. As a consequence, the problem of losing jobs increases as some people continue to suffer. Students may read about the high unemployment rate in our nation, but they likely never stop to consider how joblessness can begin a downward spiral in a person's life. Unemployment means there is no paycheck, so people have no power to purchase their needs. If they cannot make their mortgage payments, people will lose their homes, which is, of course, a huge hit to a family. People may also have horribly high debts they can no longer pay off. Some may have aggravated their problems by spending irresponsibly, but others may have gone into debt for legitimate reasons, such as healthcare costs. Therefore, when a person loses his job, he loses his self-respect and self-confidence. Sadly, a lack of money and self-respect may turn a person toward crime or drugs, or both. Robberies have been in the news a lot more often. With a lack of money within a family due to unemployment, a family can break down because there is always a stress of not being able to pay the bills, have food on the table, etc. Financial stress can become a major source of tension between spouses, which can possibly lead to many arguments and divorce. The impact of unemployment can be far-reaching, fostering crime, and destroying families. The possible causes for unemployment are improvement of technology, recession, and globalization. However, the issue of unemployment should be fixed by creating jobs for people. Meanwhile, people and their families should stay together, be calm, and make it through the difficult time.

United States. Dept. of Labor. The Employment Situation - October 2010. Washington : US Dept. of Labor, 2010. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.