Unemployment Ideas

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I used two academic sources, since you were not clear on the sort of sources you needed.

Coibion, O, Y Gorodnichenko and Dmitri Koustas (2013). Amerisclerosis? The Puzzle of Rising U.S. Unemployment Persistence. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, pp. 193-241

Moscarini, G and Fabien Postel-Vinay (2012) The Contribution of Large and Small Employers to Job Creation in Times of High and Low Unemployment. The American Economic Review, Vol. 102, No. 6: pp. 2509-2539

What I did is throw out some ideas from these two sources and their implications. This is not a cohesive paper, but a detailed outline of 1300 words.

Some ideas on Unemployment

The unemployment issue for the US is bleak. Several new factors are now involved that make recoveries more anemic and less interesting for people to get back, to work. Of course, there's outsourcing, but even there, diminishing returns has already taken its toll. The Coibion (2013) article mentions long term and structural (that is, built-in) unemployment as a new variable. This means that the nature of the economy in America is insufficient to employ most of its citizens on the labor market. And this assumes that the numbers are accurate.

Underemployment is not identical with "employment," yet, they are not included in the main unemployment figure, known as U1. Of course, this is the worst of all figures, but it is the lowest, so its used. U6, taking into account marginal employment, underemployment and people that have given up, the real rate of unemployment is over 30% and rising. Another figure not reported is consumer debt, that is, the debt that Americans carry for their purchases. This is about $12 trillion, not much lower than the federal debt of $17 trillion.

The implications are frightening. First, there is no recovery of any kind. There are reasons for this. Poor consumer confidence, extremely high debt from all sources, no further mechanism to borrow, massive interest payments, huge trade deficits and globalization all contribute. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has cost the public treasury well over $6 ...