The Economic Cost Of Unemployment And Underemployment

Going beyond the usual focus on unemployment, this 2004 book explores the health effects of other kinds of underemployment including forms of inadequate employment as involuntary part-time and poverty wage work. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this compares falling into unemployment versus inadequate employment relative to remaining adequately employed. Outcomes include self-esteem, alcohol abuse, depression, and low birth weight. The panel data permit study of the plausible reverse causation hypothesis of selection. Because the sample is national and followed over two decades, the study explores cross-level effects (individual change and community economic climate) and developmental transitions. Special attention is given to school leavers and welfare mothers, and, in cross-generational analysis, the effect of mothers' employment on babies' birth weights. There emerges a way of conceptualizing employment status as a continuum ranging from good jobs to bad jobs to employment with implications for policy on work and health.

Underemployment – when people are employed in some way that is insufficient, such as being overqualified or working part-time when one desires full-time employment – is a challenge faced by all industrialized nations and their organizations and individuals. Just like unemployment, some level of underemployment exists even in the best of times, but it becomes more pervasive when the job market is weak. Given the current economic climate in North America and abroad, researchers and scholars in various disciplines (psychology, business, sociology, economics) are becoming more interested in investigating the effects of underemployment and identifying possible practical solutions. Underemployment synthesizes the current understanding of the phenomenon by bringing together scholars with diverse perspectives and expertise with the aim of informing and guiding the next generation of underemployment research.

While our leaders celebrate Australia’s ‘economic miracle’, unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, has become a permanent feature of Australia’s economic landscape. Its unacceptably high level has proved remarkably resistant in the face of sustained economic growth and increased prosperity. The adverse economic and social consequences of high unemployment are likely to leave long-term scars on those affected, as well as on local communities and the entire fabric of Australian society. Yet these effects rarely feature on the policy agenda, and the costs of unemployment remain largely invisible.

Argues that the American economy has continued to decine since the late 1960s and includes ideas for America's revitalization.

Unemployment is currently the major economic concern in developed countries. This book provides a thorough analysis of the theoretical and empirical aspects of the economics of unemployment in developed countries. It emphasizes the multicausal nature of unemployment and offers a variety of approaches for coping with the problem. Contents: Unemployment: Costs and Measurement; Stocks, Flows, Duration and the Incidence of Unemployment; Search, Unemployment and Unfilled Vacancies; Macroeconomics of Unemployment: The Classical Approach; Macroeconomics of Unemployment: The Non-Market Clearing Approach; Non-Natural Unemployment: The Empirical Evidence; The Natural Rate of Unemployment: The Supply Side; The Natural Rate of Unemployment: The Demand Side; Unemployment: Policy and Prospects; Bibliography^