unemployment, condition of one who is able to work but
unable to find work. Formerly assumed to be voluntary,
idleness was punishable by law; however it is now
recognized
that
unemployment arises from factors beyond the control
of
the individual worker. Unemployment may be due to
seasonal
layoffs (e.g., in agricultural jobs), technological
changes
in industry (particularly by increased automation),
racial
discrimination, lack of adequate skills by the worker,
or
fluctuations in the economy. The term underemployment is
often used to describe the condition of those who work
part-time because full-time jobs are unavailable or who
are
employed at less-skilled work than they are qualified to
do.
In developing countries, unemployment is often caused by
the
urban migration that
generally precedes the industrial
development needed to employ those migrants. In
industrial
nations, most unemployment is the result of
economic recessions and depressions. In the
Great Depression of
the
1930s unemployment rose to 25% of the workforce in
Germany,
Great Britain, and the United States.
In the post–World War II era most of W Europe and Japan
generally kept their unemployment levels below 3%, and
by
the late 1960s the
rate in the United States, where
there
had been far more fluctuation, was down to less than 4%.
Since the 1970s, however, worldwide economic changes
have
generally kept the U.S. unemployment rate above 5%. It
was
greater than 10% in 1982, the highest rate since 1940,
and
the rate was considerably higher among nonwhite
minorities
and the young, approaching 50% among African-American
teenagers in urban areas. By 1990 the average
unemployment
rate had dropped to almost 5%. It fluctuated between 5%
and
7% for most of the 1990s but dropped to around 4% by
1999
before a recession (2001) led it to rise to 6.3% in
mid-2003. It subsequently dropped to 5.4% by the end of
2004. During the 1990s unemployment rates in many
European
countries reached 10% and higher.
As Keynesian economics (see Keynes, John Maynard) gained
influence among policymakers, more countries committed
themselves to finding ways to approach full
employment through government intervention. Governments, in
addition to
trying to increase employment opportunities by
stimulating
business, have also taken other measures to deal with
the
problem. In the United States, the Social Security Act
of
1935 and the Employment Act of 1946 represented moves in
this direction; in Great Britain, labor exchanges were
set
up and a contributory unemployment insurance system
established. Under the Communist economic systems of the
Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China,
attempts
were made to eliminate unemployment by socializing the
means
of production and distribution and by directing labor
into
more productive channels, but their governments
typically
proved unable to reallocate labor appropriately, leading
instead to unneeded production or underemployment. The
disintegration of the USSR and economic liberalization
in
China ended such efforts.
More summaries about the Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts