Answer to Question 1
The reasons for the high unemployment rate in the United States are numerous and complex. First, it should be noted that, even when a society has full employment, there will always be some people capable of working who are temporarily unemployed. Some people will be changing jobs. Some recent graduates or dropouts have not as yet found a job. Some people who have had prolonged illness could be starting to look for a job. For these reasons, most countries generally consider full employment to exist when the unemployment rate does not exceed 2 to 3 of the workforce.
In many areas of the country, there are more people in the workforce than there are available jobs. Automation in many industries has reduced the number of workers needed and made certain job skills (such as blacksmithing) obsolete. Planting and harvesting machines in agriculture, for example, have drastically reduced the number of people needed in producing food.
From the end of World War II until around 1965, there was a baby boom, when large numbers of children were born. For the past 50 years, these baby-boom children have been growing up and entering the labor force in large numbers. The past few decades have also seen women being liberated from the cultural expectation that they should remain at home. This increase in the number of workers seeking employment has added to the unemployment rate.
Outsourcing in a global factory is exporting manufacturing jobs from the United States to the Third World. For example, global sportswear companies headquartered in the United States are paying young girls and women in Indonesia less than 2 per day to assemble shoes that will be exported and sold in the United States.
Another factor involves foreign trade. A decrease in orders of American products for foreign customers forces U.S. companies to cut back their production and, often, to lay off workers.
Excessively dry summers in our country sharply reduce the amount of food produced. The law of supply and demand therefore drives up the price of available food. Consumers are less able to buy other products, and companies are then forced to cut back production and lay off workers.
High interest rates make it too costly for consumers to buy homes, automobiles, and other expensive items that are normally purchased with a loan. The demand for such items goes down, and again businesses have to cut back production and lay off workers.
Still another major reason for the high unemployment rate in this country is that we have a structural unemployment problem; that is, large numbers of unemployed people are not trained for the positions that are open. In recent years, many blue-collar jobs have disappeared (as in the steel industry), while high-skill jobs have opened in other areas (such as in the high-tech field of computers). As people become trained for current positions, the employment needs of American economy will again shift; thus, there will continue to be disharmony between skills needed for vacant positions and skills held by unemployed people.
Answer to Question 2
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