Causes Of Unemployment And Solutions

1540 Words7 Pages
Causes of unemployment and solutions The UK has to face high unemployment rates many times in its history. In a time of recession, it is important to find a global solution for unemployment. First, this essay will present the causes of unemployment. The second issue it considers is some economic theories that can be used to tackle unemployment using the UK in the twentieth century as an example. Finally, their effects on the economy will be shown in order to illustrate whether they favour the economy or not. According to Sloman and Wride (2009), unemployment can be classified into two broad categories: disequilibrium unemployment and equilibrium (natural) unemployment. Disequilibrium unemployment is due to inflexibility of wages when real wages are higher than the equilibrium wage of the labour market. There are three main reasons for this disequilibrium. The first one is the trade unions demanding higher level of wage than the market or the government’s minimum wage being too high. The second reason relates to a fall of aggregate demand in a recession period. If an economic is in recession, aggregate demand will fall. As a consequence, business will shrink to reduce costs. In this situation, a possible solution is that firms can choose to pay the employee less and reduce work capacity. However, with minimum wage and trade union’s pressure, this solution is not practical. Moreover, making people redundant can save money in terms of administration costs. Therefore, it is a rational decision to lay off employees. In this case, there will be demand-deficient or cyclical unemployment. The third reason which leads to disequilibrium unemployment is growth in the labour supply. As labour supply increases, wages will tend to decrease. However, the fact that wages stay at the same level will result in a labour force surplus. The second category is equilibrium

More about Causes Of Unemployment And Solutions

Open Document