UNEMPLOYMENT HOMEWORK!? ! can anyone help me?

Question

Can anyone give me info or answer these questions on unemployment?

- How does unemployment impact the economy?

- What is the current rate of umemployment in Australia?

- What was the umemployment rate in Australia 20 years ago?

- What is the difference between Structural and Cyclical unemployment?


THANKS------ web sites about unemployment would help too!!! THANKS HEAPS

CAN YOU PLEASE HELP PEOPLE!!! LOL I REALLY NEED HELP!

Answer 1

- How does unemployment impact the economy?

High unemployment implies low real Gross Domestic Product - human resources are not being used as completely as possible and are thus wasting opportunities to produce goods and services. The economic health and real wealth of nations is closely tied to what can be produced and sold.

Because the unemployed are lost from the world of production — called deficient-demand or cyclical unemployment — thus represents a profound form of inefficiency, sometimes called "Keynesian inefficiency." (However, this loss of production might instead be caused by classical unemployment or Marxian unemployment, which reduce potential output by restricting supply.) Okun's Law tells us that for the U.S., the economy misses out on about two percent of its potential output for each one percentage point of unemployment above the "full employment" unemployment rate or NAIRU (see below). Alternatively, this "law" says that as unemployment rises by one percentage point, say from 5% to 6% of the civilian labour force, the percentage of potential output that could have been produced but was not rises by about two points.

Unemployed workers are lost from the producing world of work, but the reduction in their consumption also has a negative effect on the businesses they no longer patronize, and on the overall economy. One business's employees are the next business's customers. As workers reduce or increase spending, based on their present or expected earnings, the impact on the bottom line of the businesses they patronize is disproportionately greater. A large loss of jobs at one employer may reduces aggregate income and spending so that other businesses come to expect to sell fewer goods, prompting them to consider cutting production and reducing their own workforces. A spiraling circle of job cuts tends to cause or sharpen business panics. The tasks of predicting and moderating panics or recessions is made more difficult by the self-perpetuating negative feedback on the economy of the reduced spending of unemployed workers. The impact of unemployment on businesses is sharpened because the bottom line in business reflects the margin after variable and fixed costs are paid, so that the last lots of goods or services sold tend to be much more profitable than the first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#Costs_to_businesses_and_to_economic_growth


- What is the current rate of umemployment in Australia?

As of January 2007, unemployment was 4.6% with 10,334,800 persons employed

http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/d3310114.nsf/Home/key+national+indicators


- What was the umemployment rate in Australia 20 years ago?

1986–1987 8.1%
1987–1988 7.5 %

http://72.14.235.104/u/AustralianBureauOfStatistics?q=cache:M4V1ZSxT16AJ:www.abs.gov.au/Websitedbs/D3310116.NSF/85255e31005a1918852556c2005508d8/218ee2d093559b88ca256ecb0022dad6!OpenDocument+unemployment+rate+in+1987&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&ie=UTF-8


- What is the difference between Structural and Cyclical unemployment?

They have different causes. Cyclical unemployment exists due to inadequate effective aggregate demand. Structural unemployment involves a mismatch between the workers looking for jobs and the vacancies available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_types#Structural_unemployment