文档介绍：CHAPTER SIX
Unemployment6
A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest
sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under the sun.
— Thomas Carlyle
Unemployment is the macroeconomic problem that affects people most directly
and severely. For most people, the loss of a job means a reduced living standard
and psychological distress. It is no surprise that unemployment is a frequent topic
of political debate and that politicians often claim that their proposed policies
would help create jobs.
Economists study unemployment to identify its causes and to help improve
the public policies that affect the unemployed. Some of these policies, such as
job-training programs, assist people in finding employment. Others, such as un-
employment insurance, alleviate some of the hardships that the unemployed face.
Still other policies affect the prevalence of unemployment inadvertently. Laws
mandating a high minimum wage, for instance, are widely thought to raise un-
employment among the least skilled and experienced members of the labor
force. By showing the effects of various policies, economists help policymakers
evaluate their options.
Our discussions of the labor market so far have ignored unemployment. In
particular, the model of national e in Chapter 3 was built with the assump-
tion that the economy was always at full employment. In reality, of course, not
everyone in the labor force has a job all the time: all free-market economies ex-
perience some unemployment.
Figure 6-1 shows the rate of unemployment—the percentage of the labor
force unemployed—in the United States since 1948. Although the rate of unem-
ployment fluctuates from year to year, it never gets even close to aver-
age is between 5 and 6 percent, meaning that about 1 out of every 18 people
wanting a job does not have one.
In this chapter we begin our study of unemployment by discussing why there
is always some unemployment a