TYPES OF UNEMPLOYEMENT

Classical unemployment

Classical or real-wage unemployment occurs when real wages for a job are set above the market-clearing level, causing the number of job-seekers to exceed the number of vacancies.

Many economists have argued that unemployment increases the more the government intervenes into the economy to try to improve the conditions of those without jobs. For example, minimum wage laws raise the cost of laborers with few skills to above the market equilibrium, resulting in people who wish to work at the going rate but cannot as wage enforced is greater than their value as workers becoming unemployed^.Laws restricting layoffs made businesses less likely to hire in the first place, as hiring becomes more risky, leaving many young people unemployed and unable to find work

However, this argument is criticized for ignoring numerous external factors and overly simplifying the relationship between wage rates and unemployment — in other words, that other factors may also affect unemployment.Some, such as Murray Rothbard. suggest that even social taboos can prevent wages from falling to the market clearing level.

In Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in the Twentieth-Century America, economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway argue that the empirical record of wages rates, productivity, and unemployment in American validates the classical unemployment theory. Their data shows a strong correlation between the adjusted real wage and unemployment in the United States from 1900 to 1990. However, they maintain that their data does not take into account exogenous events.

Cyclical unemployment

Cyclical or Keynesian unemployment, also known as deficient-demand unemployment, occurs when there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy to provide jobs for everyone who wants to work. Demand for most goods and services falls, less production is needed and consequently fewer workers are needed, wages are sticky and do not fall to meet the equilibrium level, and mass unemployment results^.Its name is derived from the frequent shifts in the business cycle although unemployment can also be persistent as occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. With cyclical unemployment, the number of unemployed workers exceeds the number of job vacancies, so that even if full employment were attained and all open jobs were filled, some workers would still remain unemployed. Some associate cyclical unemployment with frictional unemployment because the factors that cause the friction are partially caused by cyclical variables. For example, a surprise decrease in the money supply may shock rational economic factors and suddenly inhibit aggregate demand.

Keynesian economists on the other hand see the lack of demand for jobs as potentially resolvable by government intervention. One suggested interventions involves deficit spending to boost employment and demand. Another intervention involves an expansionary monetary policy that increases the demand of money which should reduce interest rates which should lead to an increase in non-governmental spending.

Frictional Unemployment:

This is unemployment caused by people moving in between jobs, e.g. graduates or people changing jobs. There will always be some frictional unemployment.

Also high benefits may encourage people to stay on benefits rather than get work this is sometimes known as "voluntary unemployment"

Structural Unemployment

This occurs due to a mismatch of skills in the labour market it can be caused by:
a) Occupational immobility's. This refers to the difficulties in learning new skills applicable to a new industry, and technological change.

b) geographical Immobility's. This refers to the difficulty in moving regions to get a job.

c) Technological Change. If there is the developments of labour saving technology in some industries there will be a fall in demand for labour.

d) Structural change in the economy. The decline of the coal mines due to a lack of competitiveness meant that many coal miners were unemployed and they may find it more difficult to get jobs in new industries such as computers

Seasonal Unemployment

Unemployment tends to be higher during certain times of the year, either in summer or winter depending on the country. The UK government actually produce a seasonally adjusted unemployment figure to take this into account.