You can choose a topic from this semester or something you come up with yourself, but your presentation must be about economics and be original (ie. not just material verbatim that you have pulled from your text/readings or off the internet). Of course, you can still insert charts, graphs, videos, graphics, and excerpts from outside sources (as long as you cite those sources!) I want to see your commentary and analysis, in your own words.
Important: Copying the work of others and representing it as your own (ex. copy and paste off of the internet or your text, or using someone else's work and just changing a few words) is Plagiarism, a serious academic offense.I have enabled the Turnitin plagiarism checker for this assignment, to help you identify potential areas of plagiarism.
Papers that are substantially plagiarized will not be accepted for grading.
Although the format is a PowerPoint, I want to emphasize that this is not like your typical PowerPoint, which is basically an outline for a live presentation. Your project must be substantially loaded with content. You can do this either on the slides themselves, or you can add voice-over to simulate a live presentation.
The first slide should be your Introduction slide, the next 10-15 slides should be informational slides, the last slide should be the reference slide.
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES In this chapter, you will learn about: · How Economists Define and Compute Unemployment Rate · Patterns of Unemployment · What Causes Changes in Unemployment over the Short Run · What Causes Changes in Unemployment over the Long Run BRING IT HOME Unemployment and the Great Recession Nearly eight million U.S. jobs were lost as a consequence of the Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009. At the outset of the recession, the unemployment rate was 5.0%. The rate began rising several months after the recession began, and it peaked at 10.0% in October 2009, several months after the recession ended, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The job loss represented a huge number of positions gone. Subsequently, the recovery was tepid. Companies added some positions, but as of summer 2013, four years after the end of the recession, unemployment was about 7.5%, well above the pre-recession rate. Employment began increasing at the outset of 2010, and reached its pre-recession level in mid-2014. However, because of population and labor force growth, the unemployment rate at that point was still slightly above 6%. The economy only returned to an unemployment rate of 5.0% in September 2015, and it has remained at or slightly below that level since then, up through January 2017. This brief overview of unemployment during and after the Great Recession highlights a few important points. First, unemployment is a lagging indicator of business activity. It didn’t begin to increase until a few months after the onset of the recession, and it didn’t begin to decline until several months after the recovery. Second, the decline in the unemployment rate was quite slow, with the pre-recession unemployment rate only reaching a higher level than six years after the recession ended. This reflects a combination of slow increase in the number of jobs and ongoing increases in the size of the population and the labor force. It turns out that recent recessions, going back to the early 1990s, have been characterized by longer periods of recovery than their predecessors. We will return to this point at the end of the chapter. However, first we need to examine unemployment. What constitutes it, and how do we measure it? Unemployment can be a terrible and wrenching life experience—like a serious automobile accident or a messy divorce—whose consequences only someone who has gone through it can fully understand. For unemployed individuals and their families, there is the day-to-day financial stress of not knowing from where the next paycheck is coming. There are painful adjustments, like watching your savings account dwindle, selling a car and buying a cheaper one, or moving to a less expensive place to live. Even when the unemployed person finds a new job, it may pay less than the previous one. For many people, their job is an important part of their self worth. When unemployment separates people from the workforce, it can affect family relationships as well as mental and physical health. The human costs of unemployment alone would justify making a low level of unemployment an important public policy priority. However, unemployment also includes economic costs to the broader society. When millions of unemployed but willing workers cannot find jobs, economic resource are unused. An economy with high unemployment is like a company operating with a functional but unused factory. The opportunity cost of unemployment is the output that the unemployed workers could have produced. This chapter will discuss how economists define and compute the unemployment rate. It will examine the patterns of unemployment over time, for the U.S. economy as a whole, for different demographic groups in the U.S. economy, and for other countries. It will then consider an economic explanation for unemployment, and how it explains the patterns of unemployment and suggests public policies for reducing it. Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: · Calculate the labor force participation rate and the unemployment rate · Explain hidden unemployment and what it means to be in or out of the labor force · Evaluate the collection and interpretation of unemployment data Newspaper or television reports typically describe unemployment as a percentage or a rate. A recent report might have said, for example, from August 2009 to November 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate rose from 9.7% to 10.0%, but by June 2010, it had fallen to 9.5%. At a glance, the changes between the percentages may seem small. However, remember that the U.S. economy has about 160 million adults (as of the beginning of 2017) who either have jobs or are looking for them. A rise or fall of just 0.1% in the unemployment rate of 160 million potential workers translates into 160,000 people, which is roughly the total population of a city like Syracuse, New York, Brownsville, Texas, or Pasadena, California. Large rises in the unemployment rate mean large numbers of job losses. In November 2009, at the peak of the recession, about 15 million people were out of work. Even with the unemployment rate now at 4.8% as of January 2017, about 7.6 million people who would like to have jobs are out of work. LINK IT UP The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks and reports all data related to unemployment. Who’s In or Out of the Labor Force? Should we count everyone without a job as unemployed? Of course not. For example, we should not count children as unemployed. Surely, we should not count the retired as unemployed. Many full-time college students have only a part-time job, or no job at all, but it seems inappropriate to count them as suffering the pains of unemployment. Some people are not working because they are rearing children, ill, on vacation, or on parental leave. The point is that we do not just divide the adult population into employed and unemployed. A third group exists: people who do not have a job, and for some reason—retirement, looking after children, taking a voluntary break before a new job—are not interested in having a job, either. It also includes those who do want a job but have quit looking, often due to discouragement due to their inability to find suitable employment. Economists refer to this third group of those who are not working and not looking for work as out of the labor force or not in the labor force. The U.S. unemployment rate, which is based on a monthly survey carried out by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, asks a series of questions to divide the adult population into employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force. To be classified as unemployed, a person must be without a job, currently available to work, and actively looking for work in the previous four weeks. Thus, a person who does not have a job but who is not currently available to work or has not actively looked for work in the last four weeks is counted as out of the labor force. Employed: currently working for pay Unemployed: Out of work and actively looking for a job Out of the labor force: Out of paid work and not actively looking for a job Labor force: the number of employed plus the unemployed Calculating the Unemployment Rate Figure 8.2 shows the three-way division of the 16-and-over population. In January 2017, about 62.9% of the adult population was "in the labor force"; that is, people are either employed or without a job but looking for work. We can divide those in the labor force into the employed and the unemployed. Table 8.1 shows those values. The unemployment rate is not the percentage of the total adult population without jobs, but rather the percentage of adults who are in the labor force but who do not have jobs: Unemployment rate=Unemployed peopleTotal labor force × 100Unemployment rate=Unemployed peopleTotal labor force × 100 Figure 8.2 Employed, Unemployed, and Out of the Labor Force Distribution of Adult Population (age 16 and older), January 2017 The total adult, working-age population in January 2017 was 254.1 million. Out of this total population, 152.1 were classified as employed, and 7.6 million were classified as unemployed. The remaining 94.4 were classified as out of the labor force. As you will learn, however, this seemingly simple chart does not tell the whole story. Total adult population over the age of 16 254.082 million In the labor force 159.716 million (62.9%) Employed 152.081 million Unemployed 7.635 million Out of the labor force 94.366 million (37.1%) Table 8.1 U.S. Employment and Unemployment, January 2017 (Source: https://data.bls.gov) In this example, we can calculate the unemployment rate as 7.635 million unemployed people divided by 159.716 million people in the labor force, which works out to a 4.8% rate of unemployment. The following Work It Out feature will walk you through the steps of this calculation. WORK IT OUT Calculating Labor Force Percentages How do economists arrive at the percentages in and out of the labor force and the unemployment rate? We will use the values in Table 8.1 to illustrate the steps. To determine the percentage in the labor force: Step 1. Divide the number of people in the labor force (159.716 million) by the total adult (working-age) population (254.082 million). Step 2. Multiply by 100 to obtain the percentage. Percentage in the labor force===159.716254.0820.628662.9%Percentage in the labor force=159.716254.082=0.6286=62.9% To determine the percentage out of the labor force: Step 1. Divide the number of people out the labor force (94.366 million) by the total adult (working-age) population (254.082 million). Step 2. Multiply by 100 to obtain the percentage. Percentage in the labor force===94.366254.0820.371437.1%Percentage in the labor force=94.366254.082=0.3714=37.1% To determine the unemployment rate: Step 1. Divide the number of unemployed people (7.635 million) by the total labor force (157 million). Step 2. Multiply by 100 to obtain the rate. Unemployment rate===7.635159.7160.04784.8%Unemployment rate=7.635159.716=0.0478 =4.8% Hidden Unemployment Even with the “out of the labor force” category, there are still some people who are mislabeled in the categorization of employed, unemployed, or out of the labor force. There are some people who have only part time or temporary jobs, and they are looking for full time and permanent employment that are counted as employed, although they are not employed in the way they would like or need to be. Additionally, there are individuals who are underemployed. This includes those who are trained or skilled for one type or level of work but are working in a lower paying job or one that does not utilize their skills. For example, we would consider an individual with a college degree in finance who is working as a sales clerk underemployed. They are, however, also counted in the employed group. All of these individuals fall under the umbrella of the term “hidden unemployment.” Discouraged workers