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Unemployment and its natural rate

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I
Unemployment and its natural rate.

?It can be based on current news and events. Present a news article relevant to the material of that particular week. The article should of course demonstrate or relate to a topic being covered that particular week (the topic I listed above) - a typical news article would be appropriate, but you shouldn't feel limited to that. Include a link to the article, a brief summary of the article, and a reflection that relates it to course material (BELOW) plus any other observations.

Summarize the situation so people know what you are talking about, and then discuss how that situation relates to the course material(BELOW). Both these parts are equally important and neither should be neglected. About 1 page (or what would be a page in a word processor) would be a roughly appropriate length. Your discussion should be reasonably focussed...it doesn't need to deal with everything possible under the topics for the week. Please be very clear about what idea the presentation is supposed to be illustrating and how it illustrates it.

Here are the topics in the material related to Unemployment and its natural rate. Choosing any/all/some of these will cover the course material requirement. :-)

1. How unemployment is measured
2. Why are there always people unemployed
3. Unemployment Insurance

OR

1.Economics of unions
2. Are unions good or bad for the economy

OR

1. Efficiency wages
2. Worker health
3. Worker turnover
4. Worker quality
5. Worker effort

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Solution Summary

Unemployment insurance is explained.

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The first decent article I found was the following from the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/opinion/16douthat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=off%20the%20chart&st=cse

The article starts with what the Obama administration outlined in the first weeks of its arrival while arguing for a huge stimulus bill. The argument went that in the absence of the stimulus unemployment numbers will rise much more, and stay up for a longer duration. The first stimulus bill to go through was related to banks and financial institutions and had a budget of $787 billion (the article calls it the $800 billion stimulus). The predictions about how high unemployment rates would go turned out to be lower than what happened in practice. While the predictions last winter talked about unemployment peaking at about 8% in the Fall of 2009 the actual number in October was 10.2% and it was climbing! Most economists now think that it will peak at about 11% in the Spring of 2010.

Unemployment has a bigger impact on political fortunes than almost any other issue, and both Democrats and Republicans realize this. The article also states that maybe the Democrats have a bit too much on their plate with the health care bill creating troubles of its own. It states that "If a ...

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