Unemployment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Unemployment - Essay Example But these individuals are not able to find employment at the legal minimum rate of pay due to insufficient economic opportunities within their locality or their skill set. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics lists individuals as unemployed if they are without a job, have been actively seeking work with in the past four weeks – and are available for employment. In terms of defining when a person qualifies as actively looking for work there are a number of behaviors that identify those presently seeking labor: attempting to contact employment agencies, or an employee or directly for the purpose of seeking job interviews. Other methods include attending career centers at local universities, or simply querying friends and acquaintances with respect to obtaining employment. Other activities that define an active job seeker would include dispersal of physical resumes or online applications when available, or networking with local labor unions and other professional organiza tions, or actively seeking and answering advertisements relating to employment (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009) the involuntarily unemployed are those who are actively seeking opportunities. There are passive measures of searching for employment that do not qualify the individual as being a person actively seeking work. Simply reading advertisements or taking training courses are career related, but are not active. Before any given a job interview, the active job seeker must have been engaged in one active job search within the four preceding weeks while available for employment. These categories are significant with respect to the government assistance with the intent of correcting involuntary unemployment. Categories and behaviors must be identified, and quantified in order to generate effective measures for supporting or addressing those who are seeking work but unable to find it. Many government surveys are also aware of the complexities of measuring unemployment where su bsistence farming exists, and questions to determine employment status attempt to specifically identify those engaging in private, family businesses or farming related activities. The temporal designation of four weeks is necessary, because for planning and funding purposes it is more efficient for government agencies to deal with quantifiable numerical values by which they can assign categories (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). Failure to get work can be voluntary, but the only objective indicator of economic viability in this field would be involuntary unemployment. This has implications for government and economists alike, because the rate at which involuntary unemployment occurs is indicative of larger trends or weaknesses within society. VARIATIONS OF EMPLOYMENT Yet there are still deviations from employment in the standard labor markets owned by corporatized private sector entities. In some countries, it can be difficult to measure the true rates of unemployment where l arge-scale subsistence farming occurs, for instance. Individuals outside the model of regular wage employment as common in the industrialized world also create complications for survey analysts. In addition to subsistence farming, there are others who work for occasional wages on an as needed basis temporarily, and some countries may have significant cottage industries that may or may