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Unemployment in the time of COVID-19: A research agenda ☆

David l. blustein.

a Boston College, United States of America

b University of Florida, United States of America

Joaquim A. Ferreira

c University of Coimbra, Portugal

Valerie Cohen-Scali

d Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, France

Rachel Gali Cinamon

e University of Tel Aviv, Israel

Blake A. Allan

f Purdue University, United States of America

This essay represents the collective vision of a group of scholars in vocational psychology who have sought to develop a research agenda in response to the massive global unemployment crisis that has been evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The research agenda includes exploring how this unemployment crisis may differ from previous unemployment periods; examining the nature of the grief evoked by the parallel loss of work and loss of life; recognizing and addressing the privilege of scholars; examining the inequality that underlies the disproportionate impact of the crisis on poor and working class communities; developing a framework for evidence-based interventions for unemployed individuals; and examining the work-family interface and unemployment among youth.

This essay reflects the collective input from members of a community of vocational psychologists who share an interest in psychology of working theory and related social-justice oriented perspectives ( Blustein, 2019 ; Duffy, Blustein, Diemer, & Autin, 2016 ). Each author of this article has contributed a specific set of ideas, which individually and collectively reflect some promising directions for research about the rampant unemployment that sadly defines this COVID-19 crisis.

Our efforts cohere along several assumptions and values. First, we share a view that unemployment has devastating effects on the psychological, economic, and social well-being of individuals and communities ( Blustein, 2019 ). Second, we seek to build on the exemplary research on unemployment that has documented its impact on mental health ( Paul & Moser, 2009 ; Wanberg, 2012 ) and its equally pernicious impact on communities ( International Labor Organization, 2020b ). Third, we hope that this contribution charts a research agenda that will inform practice at individual and systemic levels to support and sustain people as they grapple with the daunting challenge of seeking work and recovering from the psychological and vocational fallout of this pandemic.

The advent of this period of global unemployment is connected causally and temporally to considerable loss of life and illness, which is creating an intense level of grief and trauma for many people. The first step in developing a research agenda for unemployment during the COVID-19 era is to describe the nature of this process of loss in so many critical sectors of life. A major research question, therefore, is to what extent does this unemployment crisis vary from previous bouts of unemployment which were linked to economic fluctuations? In addition, exploring the role of loss and trauma during this crisis should yield research findings that can inform psychological and vocational interventions as well as policy guidance to support people via civic institutions and communities.

1. Recognizing and channeling our own privilege

In Joe Pinker's (2020) Atlantic essay entitled, “ The Pandemic Will Cleave America in Two”, he highlights two distinct experiences of the pandemic. One is an experience felt by those with high levels of education in stable jobs where telework is possible. Lives are now more stressful, work has been turned upside down, childcare is challenging, and leaving the house feels ominous. The other is an experience felt by the rest of the working public – those who cannot work from home and thus are putting themselves at risk every day, whose jobs have been either lost or downsized, and who are wondering not only if they will catch the virus but whether they have the means and resources to survive. As psychologists and professors, the vast majority of “us” (those writing this essay and those reading it) are extremely fortunate to be in the first group. The pandemic has only served to exacerbate the extent of this privilege.

Given our relative position of power, what are ways we can change our research to be more meaningful and impactful to those outside of our bubble? We propose that the recent work on radical healing in communities of color – where the research is often done in collaboration with the participants and building participant agency is an explicit goal - can inform our path forward ( French et al., 2020 ; Mosley et al., 2020 ). Work has always been a domain where individuals experience distress and marginalization. However, in the current pandemic and into the unforeseeable future, this will only exponentially increase. Sure, we can do surveys about people's experiences and provide incentives for their time. And of course qualitative work will allow us to more directly connect with participants and hear their voices. But what is most needed is research where participants receive tangible benefits to improve their work lives. We, as privileged scholars, need to think about how we can use our expertise in studying work to infuse our studies with real world benefits. We see this as occurring on a spectrum in terms of scholars' time and resources available – from information sharing about resources to providing job-seeking or work-related interventions. In our view, now is the time to truly commit to using work-related research not just as a way to build scholarly knowledge, but as a way to improve lives.

2. Inequality and unemployment

Focusing research efforts on real-world benefits means acknowledging how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing inequities in the labor market. Millions of workers in the U.S. have precarious jobs that are uncertain in the continuity and amount of work, do not pay a living wage, do not give workers power to advocate for their needs, or do not provide access to basic benefits ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). Power and privilege are major determinants of who is at risk for precarious work, with historically marginalized communities being disproportionately vulnerable to these job conditions ( International Labor Organization, 2020a ). In turn, people with precarious work experience chronic stress and uncertainty, putting them at risk for mental health, physical, and relational problems ( Blustein, 2019 ). These risk factors may further worsen the effects of the COVID-19 crisis while simultaneously exposing inequities that existed before the crises.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity for researchers to define and describe how precarious work creates physical, relational, behavioral, psychological, economic, and emotional vulnerabilities that worsen outcomes from crises like the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., unemployment, psychological distress). For example, longitudinal studies can examine how precarious work creates vulnerabilities in different domains, which in turn predict outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic, including unemployment and mental health. This may include larger scale cohort studies that examine how the COVID-19 crisis has created a generation of precarity among people undergoing the school-to-work transition. Researchers can also study how governmental and nonprofit interventions reduce vulnerability and buffer the relations between precarious work and various outcomes. For example, direct cash assistance is becoming increasingly popular as an efficient way to help people in poverty ( Evans & Popova, 2014 ). However, dominant social narratives (e.g., the myth of meritocracy, the American dream) blame people with poor quality work for their situations. Psychologists have a critical role in (a) documenting false social narratives, (b) studying interventions to provide accurate counter narratives (e.g., people who receive direct cash assistance do not spend money on alcohol or drugs; most people who need assistance are working; Evans & Popova, 2014 ), and (c) studying how to effectively change attitudes among the public to create support for effective interventions.

3. Work-family interface

Investigating the work-family interface during unemployment may appear contradictory. It can be argued that because there is no paid work, the work-family interface does not exist. But ‘work’ is an integral part of people's lives, even during unemployment; for example, working to find a job is a daunting task that is usually done from home. Thus, the work-family interface also exists during unemployment, but our knowledge about this is limited. Our current knowledge on the work-family interface primarily focuses on people who work full-time and usually among working parents with young children ( Cinamon, 2018 ). As such, focusing on the work-family interface during periods of unemployment represents a needed research agenda that can inform public policy and scholarship in work-family relationships.

The rise in unemployment due to COVID-19 relates not only to the unemployed, but also to other family members. Important research questions to consider are how are positive and negative feelings and thoughts about the absence of work conveyed and co-constructed by family members? What family behaviors and dynamics promote and serve as social capital for the unemployed and for the other members of the family? Do job search behaviors serve as a form of modeling for other family members? What are the experiences of unemployed spouses and children, and how do these experiences shape their own career development? These issues can be discerned among unemployed people of different ages, communities, and cultures.

Several research methods can promote this agenda. Participatory action research can enable vocational researchers to be proactive and involved in increasing social solidarity. This approach requires mutual collaboration between the researcher and families wherein one of the parents is unemployed. By giving them voice to describe their experiences, thoughts, ideas, and suggested solutions, we affirm inclusion of the individuals living through the new reality, thereby conveying respect and acknowledgment. At the same time, we can bring ideas, knowledge, and social connections to the families that can serve as social capital. In addition, longitudinal quantitative studies among unemployed families that explore some of the issues noted above would be important as a means of exploring how the new unemployment experience is shaping both work and relationships. We also advocate that meaningful incentives be offered to participants in all of these studies, such as online job search workshops and career education interventions for adolescents.

4. Strategies for dealing with unemployment in the pandemic of 2020

Forward-looking governments and organizations (such as universities) should begin thinking about how to deal with the immediate and long-term consequences of the economic crisis created by COVID-19, especially in the area of unemployment. Creating meaningful interventions to assist the newly unemployed will be difficult because of the unprecedented number of individuals and families that are affected and because of the diverse contextual and personal factors that characterize this new population. Because of this diversity of contextual and personal factors, different interventions will be required for different patterns of individual/contextual characteristics ( Ferreira et al., 2015 ).

In broad outline, a research program to address the diversity of issues identified above could be envisioned to consist of several distinct phases: First, it would be necessary to carefully assess the external circumstances of the unemployed individual's job loss, including the probability of re-employment, financial condition, family composition, and living conditions, among others. Second, an assessment should be made of the individual's strengths and growth edges, particularly as they impact the current situation. These assessments could be performed via paper or online questionnaire. Based on these initial assessments, the third phase would involve using statistical analyses such as cluster analysis to form distinct groups of unemployed individuals, perhaps based in part on the probability of re-employment following the pandemic. The fourth phase would focus on determining the types (and/or combinations) of intervention most appropriate for each group (e.g., temporary government assistance; emotional support counseling; retraining for better future job prospects; relocation, etc.). Because access to specific types of assistance is frequently a serious challenge, especially for underprivileged individuals, the fifth phase should emphasize facilitating individuals' access to the specific assistance they need. Finally, the sixth phase of research should evaluate the efficacy of this approach, although designing such a large research program in a crisis situation requires ongoing process evaluation throughout the design and implementation stages of the research program.

5. Unemployment among youth

As reflected in a recent International Labor Organization (2020a) report on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, youth were already vulnerable within the workforce prior to the crisis; the recent advent of massive job losses and growing precarity of work is having particularly painful impacts on young people across the globe. The COVID-19 economic crisis with vast increases in unemployment (and competition between workers) and the probable growth of digitalization may result in a major dislocation of young workers from the labor market for some time ( International Labor Organization, 2020b ). To provide knowledge to meet this daunting challenge, researchers should develop an agenda focusing on two major components—the first is a participatory mode of understanding the experience of youth and the second is the development of evidence-based interventions that are derived from this research process.

The data gathering aspect of this research agenda optimally should focus on understanding unemployed youths' perception of their situation (opportunities, barriers, fears, and intentions) and of the new labor market. We propose that research is needed to unpack how youth are constructing this new reality, their relationship to society, to others, and to the world. This crisis may have changed their priorities, the meaning of work, and their lifestyle. For example, this crisis may have led to an awareness of the necessity of developing more environmentally responsible behaviors ( Cohen-Scali et al., 2018 ). These new life styles could result in skills development and increased autonomy and adaptability among young people. In addition, the focus on understanding youths' experience, which can encompass qualitative and quantitative methods, should also include explorations of shifts in youths' sense of identity and purpose, which may be dramatically affected by the crisis. The young people who are without work should be involved at each step of the research process in order to improve their capacities, knowledge, and agency and to ensure that the research is designed from their lived experiences.

Building on these research efforts, interventions may be designed that include individual counseling strategies as well as systemic interventions based on analyses of the communities in which young people are involved (for example, families and couples and not only individuals). In addition, we need more research to learn about the process of collective empowerment and critical consciousness development, which can inform youths' advocacy efforts and serve as a buffer in their career development ( Blustein, 2019 ).

6. Conclusion

The research ideas presented in this contribution have been offered as a means of stimulating needed scholarship, program development, and advocacy efforts. Naturally, these ideas are not intended to be exhaustive. We hope that readers will find ideas and perspectives in our essay that may stimulate a broad-based research agenda for our field, optimally informing transformative interventions and needed policy interventions for individuals and communities suffering from the loss of work (and loss of loved ones in this pandemic). A common thread in our essay is the recommendation that research efforts be constructed from the lived experiences of the individuals who are now out of work. As we have noted here, their experiences may not be similar to other periods of extensive unemployment, which argues strongly for experience-near, participatory research. We are also advocating for the use of rigorous quantitative methods to develop new understanding of the nature of unemployment during this period and to develop and assess interventions. In addition, we would like to advocate that the collective scholarly efforts of our community include incentives and outcomes that support unemployed individuals. For example, online workshops and resources can be shared with participants and other communities as a way of not just dignifying their participation, but of also providing tangible support during a crisis.

In closing, we are humbled by the stories that we hear from our communities about the job loss of this pandemic period. Our authorship team shares a deep commitment to research that matters; in this context, we believe that our work now matters more than we can imagine.

☆ The order of authorship for authors two through six was determined randomly; each of these authors contributed equally to this paper.

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A Crisis of Long-Term Unemployment Is Looming in the U.S.

• Ofer Sharone

How biases trap qualified job seekers in a cycle of rejection — and how to help them break free.

The stigma of long-term unemployment can be profound and long-lasting. As the United States eases out of the Covid-19 pandemic, it needs better approaches to LTU compared to the Great Recession. But research shows that stubborn biases among hiring managers can make the lived experiences of jobseekers distressing, leading to a vicious cycle of diminished emotional well-being that can make it all but impossible to land a role. Instead of sticking with the standard ways of helping the LTU, however, a pilot program that uses a wider, sociologically-oriented lens can help jobseekers understand that their inability to land a gig isn’t their fault. This can help people go easier on themselves which, ultimately, can make it more likely that they’ll find a new position.

Covid-19 has ravaged employment in the United States, from temporary furloughs to outright layoffs. Currently, over 4 million Americans have been out of work for six months or more , including an estimated 1.5 million workers in white-collar occupations, according to my calculations. Though the overall unemployment rate is down from its peak last spring, the percent of the unemployed who are long-term unemployed (LTU) keeps increasing and is currently at over 40%, a level of LTU comparable to the Great Recession but otherwise unseen in the U.S. in over 60 years.

• Ofer Sharone is an expert on long-term unemployment and the author of the book Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences (University of Chicago Press). Sharone received his PhD in sociology from the University of California Berkeley, his JD from Harvard Law School, and is currently an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Unemployment

After dropping in 2020, teen summer employment may be poised to continue its slow comeback.

Last summer, businesses trying to come back from the COVID-19 pandemic hired nearly a million more teens than in the summer of 2020.

Most in the U.S. say young adults today face more challenges than their parents’ generation in some key areas

About seven-in-ten say young adults today have a harder time when it comes to saving for the future, paying for college and buying a home.

Some gender disparities widened in the U.S. workforce during the pandemic

Among adults 25 and older who have no education beyond high school, more women have left the labor force than men.

Immigrants in U.S. experienced higher unemployment in the pandemic but have closed the gap

With the economic recovery gaining momentum, unemployment among immigrants is about equal with that of U.S.-born workers.

During the pandemic, teen summer employment hit its lowest point since the Great Recession

Fewer than a third (30.8%) of U.S. teens had a paying job last summer. In 2019, 35.8% of teens worked over the summer.

College graduates in the year of COVID-19 experienced a drop in employment, labor force participation

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About four-in-ten unemployed workers had been out of work for more than six months in February 2021, about double the share in February 2020.

A Year Into the Pandemic, Long-Term Financial Impact Weighs Heavily on Many Americans

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Unemployed Americans are feeling the emotional strain of job loss; most have considered changing occupations

About half of U.S. adults who are currently unemployed and are looking for a job are pessimistic about their prospects for future employment.

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The Pandemic's Impact on Unemployment and Labor Force Participation Trends

Following early 2020 responses to the pandemic, labor force participation declined dramatically and has remained below its 2019 level, whereas the unemployment rate recovered briskly. We estimate the trend of labor force participation and unemployment and find a substantial impact of the pandemic on estimates of trend. It turns out that levels of labor force participation and unemployment in 2021 were approaching their estimated trends. A return to 2019 levels would then represent a tight labor market, especially relative to long-run demographic trends that suggest further declines in the participation rate.

At the end of 2019, the labor market was hotter than it had been in years. Unemployment was at a historic low, and participation in the labor market was finally increasing after a prolonged decline. That tight labor market came to an abrupt halt with the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.

Now, two years later, the labor market has mostly recovered from the depths of the pandemic recession. The unemployment rate is close to pre-pandemic lows, and job openings are at record highs. Yet, participation and employment rates have remained persistently below pre-pandemic levels. This suggests the possibility that the pandemic has permanently reduced participation in the economy and that current participation rates reflect a new normal. In this article, we explore how the pandemic has affected labor markets and whether a new normal is emerging.

What Is "Normal"?

One way to define the normal level of a variable is to estimate its trend and compare the observed data with the estimated trend values. Constructing a trend essentially means drawing a smooth line through the variations in the actual data.

But this means that constructing the trend for a point in time typically involves considering what happened both before and after that point in time. Thus, constructing the trend at the end of a sample is especially hard, since we do not yet know how the data will evolve.

We construct trends for three aggregate labor market ratios — the labor force participation (LFP) rate, the unemployment rate and the employment-population ratio (EPOP) — using methods described in our 2019 article " Projecting Unemployment and Demographic Trends ."

First, we estimate statistical models for LFP and unemployment rates of demographic groups defined by age, gender and education. For each gender and education, we decompose its unemployment and LFP into cyclical components common to all age groups and smooth local trends for age and cohort effects.

Second, we aggregate trends from the estimates of the group-specific trends. Specifically, we construct the trend for the aggregate LFP rate as the population-share-weighted sum of the corresponding estimated trends for demographic groups. We construct the aggregate unemployment rate and EPOP trends from the group-specific LFP and unemployment trends and the groups' population shares.

In our previous work, we estimated the trends for the unemployment rate and LFP rate of a gender-education group separately using maximum likelihood methods. The estimates reported in this article are based on the joint estimation of LFP and unemployment rate trends using Bayesian methods.

We separately estimate the trends using data from 1976 to 2019 (pre-pandemic) and from 1976 to 2021 (including the pandemic period). Figures 1, 2 and 3 display annual averages for the three aggregate labor market ratios — the LFP rate, the unemployment rate and EPOP, respectively — from 1976 to 2021.

In each figure, the solid black line denotes the observed values, and the blue and pink lines denote the estimated trend using data from 1976 up to and including 2019 and 2021, respectively. The estimated trends are subject to uncertainty, and the plotted trends represent the median estimate of the trend.

For the estimates based on data up to 2021, we also include the 90 percent coverage area shown as the shaded pink area. According to the statistical model, there is a 90 percent probability that the trend is contained in the coverage area. The blue and pink dotted lines represent our projections on how the labor market ratios will evolve until 2031, again based on the estimated trend up to and including 2019 and 2021. The shaded gray vertical areas highlight recessions as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Pre-Pandemic Trends: 1976-2019

We start with the pre-pandemic trends for the LFP rate and unemployment rate estimated for data from 1976 through 2019. After a long recovery from the 2007-09 recession, the LFP rate was 63.1 percent in 2019 (slightly above the estimated trend value of 62.8 percent), and the unemployment rate was 3.7 percent (noticeably below its estimated trend value of 4.7 percent).

The LFP rate being above trend and the unemployment rate being below trend reflects the characterization of the 2019 labor market as "hot." But note that even though the LFP rate exceeded its trend value in 2019, it was still lower than during the 2007-09 period. This difference is accounted for by the declining trend in the LFP rate.

As noted in our 2019 article , LFP rates and unemployment rates differ systematically across demographic groups. Participation rates tend to be higher for younger, more-educated workers and for men. Unemployment rates tend to be lower for men and for the older and more-educated population.

Thus, changes in the population composition over time — that is, the relative size of demographic groups — will affect the aggregate LFP and unemployment rates, in addition to changes in the LFP and unemployment rate trends of the demographic groups.

As also noted in our 2019 article, the hump-shaped trend of the aggregate LFP rate reflects a variety of forces:

• Prior to 1990, the aggregate LFP rate was boosted by an upward trend in the LFP rate of women. But after 1990, the LFP rate of women began declining. Combining this with declining trend LFP rates for other demographic groups has reduced the aggregate LFP rate.
• Changes in the age distribution had a limited impact prior to 2005, but the aging population since then has lowered the aggregate LFP rate substantially.
• Increasing educational attainment has contributed positively to aggregate LFP throughout the period.

The steady decline of the unemployment rate trend reflects mostly the contributions from an older and more-educated population and, to some extent, a decline in the trend unemployment rates of demographic groups.

Pre-Pandemic Expectations of Future LFP and Unemployment Trends

Our statistical model of smooth local trends for the LFP and unemployment rates of demographic groups has the property that the best forecast for future trend values of demographic groups is their last estimated trend value. Thus, the model will only predict a change in the trend of aggregate ratios if the population shares of its constituent groups are changing.

We combine the U.S. Census Bureau population forecasts for the gender-age groups with an estimated statistical model of education shares for gender-age groups to forecast population shares of our demographic groups from 2020 to 2031 (the dotted blue lines in Figures 1 and 2).

As we can see, the changing demographics alone imply further reductions of 1 percentage point and 0.2 percentage points in the trend LFP rate and unemployment rate, respectively. This projection is driven by the forecasted aging of the population, which is only partially offset by the forecasted higher educational attainment.

Based on data up to 2019, the same aggregate LFP rates in 2021 as in 2019 would have represented a substantial cyclical deviation upward from the pre-pandemic trends.

It is notable that the unemployment rate is much more volatile relative to its trend than the LFP rate is. In other words, cyclical deviations from trend are much more pronounced for the unemployment rate than for the LFP rate.

In fact, in our estimation, the behavior of the unemployment rate determines the common cyclical component of both the unemployment rate and the LFP rate. Whereas the unemployment rate spikes in recessions, the LFP rate response is more muted and tends to lag recessions. This feature will be important for interpreting how the estimated trend LFP rate changed with the pandemic.

Finally, Figure 3 combines the information from the LFP rate and unemployment rate and plots actual and trend rates for EPOP. On the one hand, given the relatively small trend decline of the unemployment rate, the trend for EPOP mainly reflects the trend for the LFP rate and inherits its hump-shaped path and the projected decline over the next 10 years. On the other hand, EPOP inherits the volatility from the unemployment rate. In 2019, EPOP is notably above trend, by about 1 percentage point.

Unemployment and Labor Force Participation During the Pandemic

The behavior of unemployment resulting from the pandemic-induced recession was different from past recessions:

• The entire increase in unemployment between February and April 2020 was accounted for by the increase in unemployment from temporary layoffs. This differed from previous recessions, when a spike in permanent layoffs led the bulge of unemployment in the trough.
• The recovery started in May 2020, and the speed of recovery was also much faster than in previous recessions. After only seven months, unemployment declined by 8 percentage points.
• The behavior of the unemployment rate is reflected in the 2020 recession being the shortest NBER recession on record: It lasted for two months (March to April 2020).

To summarize, the runup and decline of the unemployment rate during the pandemic were unusually rapid, but the qualitative features were not that different from previous recessions after properly accounting for temporary layoffs, as noted in the 2020 working paper " The Unemployed With Jobs and Without Jobs . "

The decline in the LFP rate was sharp and persistent. The LFP rate dropped from 63.4 percent in February 2020 to 60.2 percent in April 2020, an unprecedented drop during such a short period of time. After a rebound to 61.7 percent in August 2020, the LFP rate essentially moved sideways and remained below 62 percent until the end of 2021.

The large drop in the aggregate LFP rate has been attributed to, among others:

• More people — especially women — leaving the labor force to care for children because of school closings or to care for relatives at increased health risk, as noted in the 2021 work " Assessing Five Statements About the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on Women (PDF) " and the 2021 article " Caregiving for Children and Parental Labor Force Participation During the Pandemic "
• An increase in retirement due to health concerns, as noted in the 2021 working paper " How Has COVID-19 Affected the Labor Force Participation of Older Workers? "
• Generous pandemic income transfers and unemployment insurance programs, as noted in the 2021 article " COVID Transfers Dampening Employment Growth, but Not Necessarily a Bad Thing "

All of these factors might impact the participation trend, but by how much?

The Pandemic's Effect on Trend Estimates for LFP and Unemployment

The aggregate trend assessment for the LFP and unemployment rates has changed considerably as a result of 2020 and 2021. Repeating the estimation of trend and cycle for our demographic groups using data from 1976 up to 2021 yields the pink trend lines in Figures 1 and 2.

The updated trend estimates now put the positive cyclical gap in 2019 for LFP at 0.5 percentage points (rather than 0.3 percentage points) and the negative cyclical gap for the unemployment rate at 1.4 percentage points (rather than 1 percentage point). That is, by this estimate of the trend, the labor market in 2019 was even hotter than by the estimates from the 1976-2019 period.

In 2021, the actual LFP rate is essentially at trend, and the unemployment rate is only slightly above trend. That is, by this estimate of the trend, the labor market is relatively tight.

Notice that even though the new 2021 trend estimates for both the LFP and the unemployment rates differ noticeably from the trend values predicted for 2021 based on data up to 2019, the trend revisions for the LFP rate are limited to more recent years, whereas the trend revisions for the unemployment rate apply to the whole sample.  

The difference in revisions is related to how confident we can be about the estimated trends. The 90 percent coverage area is quite narrow for the LFP rate for the entire sample up to the last four years. Thus, there is no need to drastically revise the estimated trend prior to 2017.

On the other hand, the 90 percent coverage area for the trend unemployment rate is quite broad throughout the sample. That is, a wide range of values for trend unemployment is potentially consistent with observed unemployment values. Consequently, the last two observations lead to a wholesale reassessment of the level of the trend unemployment rate.

Another way to frame the 2020-21 trend revisions is as follows. The unemployment rate is very cyclical, deviations from trend are large, and though the sharp increase and decline of the unemployment rate in 2020-21 is unusual, an upward level shift of the trend unemployment rate best reflects the additional pandemic data.

The LFP rate, however, is usually not very cyclical, and it is only weakly related to the unemployment rate. Since the model assumes that the cyclical response does not change over the sample, it then attributes the large 2020-21 drop of the LFP rate to a decline in its trend and ultimately to a decline of the trend LFP rates of most demographic groups.

Finally, the EPOP trend is again mainly determined by the LFP trend, seen in Figure 3. Including the pandemic years noticeably lowers the estimated trend for the years from 2017 onwards. The cyclical gap in 2019 is now estimated to be 1.4 percentage points, and 2021 EPOP is close to its estimated trend.

What Does the Future Hold?

In our framework, current estimates of trend LFP and the unemployment rate for demographic groups are the best forecasts of future rates. Combined with projected demographic changes, this implies a continued noticeable downward trend for the LFP rate and a slight downward trend for the unemployment rate.

The trend unemployment rate is low, independent of how we estimate the trend. But given the highly unusual circumstances of the pandemic, the model may well overstate the decline in the trend LFP rate. Therefore, it is likely that the "true" trend lies somewhere between the trends estimated using data up to 2019 and data up to 2021.

That being a possibility, it remains that labor markets as of now have been unusually tight by most other measures, such as nominal wage growth and posted job openings relative to hires. This suggests that the true trend is closer to the revised 2021 trend than to the 2019 trend. In other words, the LFP rate and unemployment rate at the end of 2021 relative to the 2021 estimate of trend LFP and unemployment rate are consistent with a tight labor market.

Andreas Hornstein is a senior advisor in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Marianna Kudlyak is a research advisor in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

To cite this Economic Brief, please use the following format: Hornstein, Andreas; and Kudlyak, Marianna. (April 2022) "The Pandemic's Impact on Unemployment and Labor Force Participation Trends." Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Brief , No. 22-12.

This article may be photocopied or reprinted in its entirety. Please credit the authors, source, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and include the italicized statement below.

V iews expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System.

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Page One Economics ®

Exploring the dynamics of unemployment.

"Unemployment is of vital importance, particularly to the unemployed." 

—Edward Heath

Introduction 

Think of some reasons people become unemployed. Did you think of someone quitting, getting fired, or being laid off? Well, all of those reasons are correct; and, if the people who experience any of those events actively seek new work, they're considered unemployed and part of the labor market. But it's not just those who quit, are fired, or are laid off who enter the labor market. Some enter the market for the first time, and some get back into it after being out for some time. 

This article provides Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Population Survey (CPS) data on when people

• enter the labor market for the first time (new entrants), 
• return to the market after being out for a while (re-entrants), 
• choose to quit for a different job (job leavers), and 
• lose their job and decide to find another one (job losers). 

Each dataset provides information about labor market and economic conditions. We'll explore these unemployed groups and how they may behave differently over time and during recessions, which are typically associated with an increase in the overall unemployment rate.

Unemployment and the Business Cycle

Let's start with some basics. Economists and agencies such as the BLS define unemployment as a condition where people at least 16 years of age are without jobs and actively seeking work. Notice there are two conditions (besides age): The person is (1) without work and (2) looking for work.

Figure 1 Unemployment Rate

SOURCE: US Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED ® , Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jVuT .

Figure 1 shows the unemployment rate between 2005 and 2024. Each shaded area of the graph represents a recession (a contractionary phase of the business cycle ). 1 Note that the overall unemployment rate tends to be sensitive to business cycles. When the economy is contracting, such as during the Great Recession of 2008-09, fewer people are employed (an increase in the unemployment rate). Economists associate cyclical unemployment with recessions in the business cycle. When the economy is expanding, more people are employed (a decrease in the unemployment rate). Economists associate frictional unemployment with these times; unemployed people tend to be either new entrants to the labor market (such as recent graduates) or re-entrants (returning to the labor market after being out for a while).  

The graph shows the unemployment rate overall, but the number of new entrants, re-entrants, job leavers, and job losers changes depending on economic conditions; how much they change tells us how sensitive each group is to the business cycle—cyclical sensitivity.

Entering the Labor Market

Everyone's journey through the labor market starts somewhere. More specifically, it starts with your first job. New entrants have never worked before and are entering the labor force for the first time. 2 They are mainly students transitioning from education to employment. When new entrants begin their job search, they don't have a job (yet) but are officially looking for work, so they count as unemployed (frictionally unemployed). New entrants make up around 10% of the total unemployed. 

However, new job seekers aren't the only ones jumping into the labor market; re-entrants previously worked but were out of the labor force before searching for another job. Re-entering the labor market is a personal and economic decision.

Re-entrants and New Entrants as a Percent of Total Unemployed

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED ® , Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jVvt .

Re-entrant unemployment is cyclically sensitive (Figure 2, blue line). 3 When compared with new entrants (red line), re-entrants make up a more significant percentage of the total unemployed, 4 particularly when there is economic expansion. As the economy expands, the percentage of re-entrants slowly increases because there is increased confidence the labor market is more favorable for job seekers. Conversely, as the economy contracts (such as during the 2008-09 and 2020 recessions), the proportion of re-entrants decreases significantly because they end their job searches, leaving the labor market.

Leaving the Labor Market Voluntarily

Job leavers voluntarily quit their job and look for new work. 5 We also call these instances voluntary separations or voluntary layoffs. Job leavers can provide information about how people feel about the labor market's strength. For example, in the post-pandemic recovery of 2021-23, factors like re-evaluation of work-life balance and a tight labor market led to an increased number of job leavers, as they were seeking higher-paying jobs or new opportunities. So, an increase in the number of job leavers can indicate a healthy labor market: It shows that workers are confident about their chances of finding a new job and that they'll voluntarily leave their current job.

Job Leavers as a Percent of Total Unemployed

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED ® , Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jVvY .

Figure 3 shows job leavers as a percent of the total unemployed from 2005 to January 2024. During recessions, such as the Great Recession of 2008-09, the percentage of job leavers declines, as fewer people leave their jobs due to uncertainty about finding new ones; this is driven by decreased business investment and demand for hires. Conversely, in economic expansions, more job leavers emerge as confidence grows, businesses invest more, and hiring increases. For example, as the economy recovered after the Great Recession (expansionary phase), the percentage of job leavers climbed upward and started to exceed pre-recession levels until the 2020 pandemic. 6 In September 2022, the percentage of job leavers peaked at 16%, and in October 2023 it returned to a pre-pandemic level of 12.3%, indicating the conclusion of what was headlined the "Great Resignation" or "Great Reshuffle." 7 The percentage of unemployed job leavers is still relatively small, and the percentage change among this group is the smallest throughout business cycles, indicating minimal cyclical sensitivity.

Leaving the Labor Market In voluntarily

Job losers are either temporarily laid off from a job but expect to be recalled or permanently laid off or fired from a job and begin looking for new work. We also call these instances involuntary separations or involuntary layoffs. Job losers have been particularly interesting to analyze because they make up the largest single group of the unemployed. 8  

Job Losers as a Percent of Total Unemployed

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED ® , Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jVwg .

Figure 4 shows job losers as a percent of the total unemployed from October 2005 to January 2024. The recessions in 2008-09 and 2020 show that the change in the percentage of job losers was reactive to each economic downturn. During the Great Recession it increased; after the recession ended in June 2009 the labor market recovery was slow, with the percentage of job losers ultimately returning to pre-recession levels in March 2015. 9 With a substantial period of economic expansion in the following years, the percentage of job losers decreased.

Each recession affects some industries more than others. During the 2020 recession, workers in the leisure and hospitality industry were the hardest hit. 10 This is an example of why job losers are the most cyclically sensitive of the four unemployed groups: As much as 70% of total business costs are employees. 11 During recessions, when businesses are dealing with decreased revenues, they look to cut their numbers of employees, investing less in labor.

Why does this information matter? Maybe you have been part of one of these unemployed groups or know someone who experienced unemployment, either voluntarily or involuntarily. When people experience unemployment, there is a reaction among each group, and how each group reacts plays a role in defining what the labor market looks and feels like for the unemployed, employed, and businesses. How cyclically sensitive each group is can also provide valuable insights for policymakers to make the best decisions for the economy and for businesses to recover after a downturn or continue to grow at a healthy rate.

1 The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee maintains a chronology of U.S. business cycles, which identifies the dates of peaks and troughs that frame economic recessions and expansions. A recession is the period between a peak of economic activity and its subsequent trough, or lowest point. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief. However, the time it takes for the economy to return to its previous peak level of activity, or its previous trend path, may be quite extended. According to the NBER chronology, the most recent peak occurred in February 2020; the most recent trough occurred in April 2020. See https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating/business-cycle-dating-procedure-frequently-asked-questions . 

2 U.S. Census Bureau. "Current Population Survey: Design and Methodology." Technical Paper 66, October 2006; https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/methodology/tp-66.pdf . 

3 Gilroy, Curtis L. and McIntire, Robert J. "Job Losers, Leavers, and Entrants: A Cyclical Analysis." JSTOR Monthly Labor Review , November 1974, 97 (11), pp. 35-9; http://www.jstor.org/stable/41839192 . Accessed March 7, 2024.

4 Note that during the COVID recession, new-entrant unemployment seems to be equally sensitive (in terms of percentage drop).

5 U.S. Census Bureau, 2006. (See footnote 2.) 

6 Lambert, Thomas E. "The Great Resignation in the United States: A Study of Labor Market Segmentation." Taylor & Francis Journals Forum for Social Economics , 2023, 52 (4), pp. 373-86; https://doi.org/10.1080/07360932.2022.2164599 . 

7 See https://www.investopedia.com/the-great-resignation-is-officially-over-7963266#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,have%20weighed%20down%20the%20economy .

8 Gilroy and McIntire, 1974. (See footnote 3.)

9 Weinberg, John. "The Great Recession and Its Aftermath." Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Federal Reserve History, 2013; https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-recession-and-its-aftermath . 

10 See https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-2020-employment-report/#:~:text=No%20matter%20how%20you%20measure,remains%20as%20of%20February%202021 .

11 See https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2022/05/01/the-biggest-cost-of-doing-business.html .

© 2024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.

Business cycle: The fluctuating levels of economic activity in an economy over a period of time measured from the beginning of one recession to the beginning of the next.

Cyclical unemployment: Unemployment associated with recessions in the business cycle.

Frictional unemployment: Unemployment that results when people are new to the job market (for example, recent graduates) or are transitioning from one job to another.

Unemployment rate: The percentage of the labor force that is willing and able to work, does not currently have a job, and is actively looking for employment.

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Unemployment Scarring Effects: An Overview and Meta-analysis of Empirical Studies

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This article reviews the empirical literature on the scarring effects of unemployment, by first presenting an overview of empirical evidence relating to the impact of unemployment spells on subsequent labor market outcomes and then exploiting meta-regression techniques. Empirical evidence is homogeneous in highlighting significant and often persistent wage losses and strong unemployment state dependence. This is confirmed by a meta-regression analysis under the assumption of a common true effect. Heterogeneous findings emerge in the literature, related to the magnitude of these detrimental effects, which are particularly penalizing in terms of labor earnings in case of unemployment periods experienced by laid-off workers. We shed light on further sources of heterogeneity and find that unemployment is particularly scarring for men and when studies’ identification strategy is based on selection on observables.

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Experiencing Long-Term Unemployment in Europe: A Conclusion

The Effects of Unemployment on Non-monetary Job Quality in Europe: The Moderating Role of Economic Situation and Labor Market Policies

The effects of unemployment assistance on unemployment exits

Data availability.

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Moreover, further outcomes discussed by the literature on scarring are family formation, crime and negative psychological implications in terms of well-being, life satisfaction and mental health (see e.g. Helbling and Sacchi 2014 ; Strandh et al. 2014 ; Mousteri et al. 2018 ; Clark and Lepinteur 2019 ).

A further strand of the recent literature focuses on the effect of adverse labor market conditions at graduation, for example focusing on the effect of local unemployment rate or graduating during a recession (see e.g. Raaum and Roed, 2006 ; Kahn 2010 ; Oreopoulos et al. 2012 ; Kawaguchi and Murao 2014 ; Altonji et al. 2016 ). The consequences of economic downturns on wages, labor supply and social outcomes for young labor market entrants have been recently surveyed by Cockx ( 2016 ), Von Wachter (2020) and Rodriguez et al. ( 2020 ).

The stigma effect means that individuals who have been unemployed face lower chances of being hired because employers may use their past history of unemployment as a negative signal.

Thus, papers using traditional multivariate descriptive analysis, duration models, or OLS regressions with a reduced number of controls which do not properly address endogeneity issues and are unlikely to have a causal interpretation (endogeneity issues are discussed in SubSect.  3.2 ).

For intergenerational scars we mean that studies focused on the effect of parents’ unemployment experiences on the children’ future employment status (see e.g. Karhula et al. 2017 ). For macroeconomic conditions at graduation we mean that we excluded that literature focused on the local unemployment rate at graduation or other local labor market conditions, rather than on individual unemployment experience and state dependence (see e.g. Oreopoulos et al. 2012 ; Raaem and Roed, 2006 ).

When we could not directly retrieve the t -statistics because not reported among the study results, we computed them as the ratio between the estimated unemployment effects ( \({\beta }_{i}\) ) and their standard errors. If studies only displayed the estimated effects and their 95% confidence intervals, the standard error can be calculated by SE  = ( ub − lb )/(2 × 1.96), where ub and lb are the upper bound and the lower bound, respectively.

We removed from the meta-regression analysis 8 articles because they did not contain sufficient information to compute the t -statistic of the estimated scarring effect. They are reported in italics in Tables 5 and 6 .

For employment outcomes we mean the likelihood of experiencing future unemployment, the probability to have a job later (employability), the fraction of days spent at work or the hours worked during the following years (labor market participation), the call-backs from employers in case of field experiment. Earning outcomes include hourly wages, labor earnings, income, etc.

Since many studies did not provide precise information on the number of covariates, we approximated \({dk}_{i}\) with the number of observations minus 2. Indeed, given that in microeconometric applications the sample sizes are very often much larger than the number of the parameters, the calculation of the partial correlation coefficient is quite robust to errors in deriving \({dk}_{i}\) (Picchio 2022 ).

The publication bias is the bias arising from the tendency of editors to publish more easily findings consistent with a conventional view or with statistically significant results, whereas studies that find small or no significant effects tend to remain unpublished (Card and Krueger 1995 ).

We employed the Precision Effect Estimate with Standard Error (PEESE) specification because its quadratic form of the standard errors has been proven to be less biased and often more efficient to check for heterogeneity than the FAT-PET specification when there is a nonzero genuine effect (Stanley and Doucouliagos 2014 ). Nevertheless, the results from the FAT-PET specification are very similar to the ones from the PEESE model.

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Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges financial support from the Cariverona Foundation Ph.D. research scholarship. He is particularly grateful to Matteo Picchio and Claudia Pigini for their comments and suggestions on a preliminary version of this paper. He also thanks the Associate Editor Massimiliano Bratti and two anonymous reviewers, whose comments were very useful for an important improvement of the paper.

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Unemployment among younger and older individuals: does conventional data about unemployment tell us the whole story?

• Hila Axelrad 1 , 2 ,
• Miki Malul 3 &
• Israel Luski 4  

Journal for Labour Market Research volume  52 , Article number:  3 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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In this research we show that workers aged 30–44 were significantly more likely than those aged 45–59 to find a job a year after being unemployed. The main contribution is demonstrating empirically that since older workers’ difficulties are related to their age, while for younger individuals the difficulties are more related to the business cycle, policy makers must devise different programs to address unemployment among young and older individuals. The solution to youth unemployment is the creation of more jobs, and combining differential minimum wage levels and earned income tax credits might improve the rate of employment for older individuals.

1 Introduction

Literature about unemployment references both the unemployment of older workers (ages 45 or 50 and over) and youth unemployment (15–24). These two phenomena differ from one another in their characteristics, scope and solutions.

Unemployment among young people begins when they are eligible to work. According to the International Labor Office (ILO), young people are increasingly having trouble when looking for their first job (ILO 2011 ). The sharp increase in youth unemployment and underemployment is rooted in long-standing structural obstacles that prevent many youngsters in both OECD countries and emerging economies from making a successful transition from school to work. Not all young people face the same difficulties in gaining access to productive and rewarding jobs, and the extent of these difficulties varies across countries. Nevertheless, in all countries, there is a core group of young people facing various combinations of high and persistent unemployment, poor quality jobs when they do find work and a high risk of social exclusion (Keese et al. 2013 ). The rate of youth unemployment is much higher than that of adults in most countries of the world (ILO 2011 ; Keese et al. 2013 ; O’Higgins 1997 ; Morsy 2012 ). Official youth unemployment rates in the early decade of the 2010s ranged from under 10% in Germany to around 50% in Spain ( http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=2229 ; Pasquali 2012 ). The youngest employees, typically the newest, are more likely to be let go compared to older employees who have been in their jobs for a long time and have more job experience and job security (Furlong et al. 2012 ). However, although unemployment rates among young workers are relatively higher than those of older people, the period of time they spend unemployed is generally shorter than that of older adults (O’Higgins 2001 ).

We would like to argue that one of the most important determinants of youth unemployment is the economy’s rate of growth. When the aggregate level of economic activity and the level of adult employment are high, youth employment is also high. Footnote 1 Quantitatively, the employment of young people appears to be one of the most sensitive variables in the labor market, rising substantially during boom periods and falling substantially during less active periods (Freeman and Wise 1982 ; Bell and Blanchflower 2011 ; Dietrich and Möller 2016 ). Several explanations have been offered for this phenomenon. First, youth unemployment might be caused by insufficient skills of young workers. Another reason is a fall in aggregate demand, which leads to a decline in the demand for labor in general. Young workers are affected more strongly than older workers by such changes in aggregate demand (O’Higgins 2001 ). Thus, our first research question is whether young adults are more vulnerable to economic shocks compared to their older counterparts.

Older workers’ unemployment is mainly characterized by difficulties in finding a new job for those who have lost their jobs (Axelrad et al. et al. 2013 ). This fact seems counter-intuitive because older workers have the experience and accumulated knowledge that the younger working population lacks. The losses to society and the individuals are substantial because life expectancy is increasing, the retirement age is rising in many countries, and people are generally in good health (Axelrad et al. 2013 ; Vodopivec and Dolenc 2008 ).

The difficulty that adults have in reintegrating into the labor market after losing their jobs is more severe than that of the younger unemployed. Studies show that as workers get older, the duration of their unemployment lengthens and the chances of finding a job decline (Böheim et al. 2011 ; De Coen et al. 2010 ). Therefore, our second research question is whether older workers’ unemployment stems from their age.

In this paper, we argue that the unemployment rates of young people and older workers are often misinterpreted. Even if the data show that unemployment rates are higher among young people, such statistics do not necessarily imply that it is harder for them to find a job compared to older individuals. We maintain that youth unemployment stems mainly from the characteristics of the labor market, not from specific attributes of young people. In contrast, the unemployment of older individuals is more related to their specific characteristics, such as higher salary expectations, higher labor costs and stereotypes about being less productive (Henkens and Schippers 2008 ; Keese et al. 2006 ). To test these hypotheses, we conduct an empirical analysis using statistics from the Israeli labor market and data published by the OECD. We also discuss some policy implications stemming from our results, specifically, a differential policy of minimum wages and earned income tax credits depending on the worker’s age.

Following the introduction and literary review, the next part of our paper presents the existing data about the unemployment rates of young people and adults in the OECD countries in general and Israel in particular. Than we present the research hypotheses and theoretical model, we describe the data, variables and methods used to test our hypotheses. The regression results are presented in Sect.  4 , the model of Business Cycle is presented in Sect.  5 , and the paper concludes with some policy implications, a summary and conclusions in Sect.  6 .

2 Literature review

Over the past 30 years, unemployment in general and youth unemployment in particular has been a major problem in many industrial societies (Isengard 2003 ). The transition from school to work is a rather complex and turbulent period. The risk of unemployment is greater for young people than for adults, and first jobs are often unstable and rather short-lived (Jacob 2008 ). Many young people have short spells of unemployment during their transition from school to work; however, some often get trapped in unemployment and risk becoming unemployed in the long term (Kelly et al. 2012 ).

Youth unemployment leads to social problems such as a lack of orientation and hostility towards foreigners, which in turn lead to increased social expenditures. At the societal level, high youth unemployment endangers the functioning of social security systems, which depend on a sufficient number of compulsory payments from workers in order to operate (Isengard 2003 ).

Workers 45 and older who have lost their jobs often encounter difficulties in finding a new job (Axelrad et al. 2013 ; Marmora and Ritter 2015 ) although today they are more able to work longer than in years past (Johnson 2004 ). In addition to the monetary rewards, work also offers mental and psychological benefits (Axelrad et al. 2016 ; Jahoda 1982 ; Winkelmann and Winkelmann 1998 ). Working at an older age may contribute to an individual’s mental acuity and provide a sense of usefulness.

On average, throughout the OECD, the hiring rate of workers aged 50 and over is less than half the rate for workers aged 25–49. The low re-employment rates among older job seekers reflect, among other things, the reluctance of employers to hire older workers. Lahey ( 2005 ) found evidence of age discrimination against older workers in labor markets. Older job applicants (aged 50 or older), are treated differently than younger applicants. A younger worker is more than 40% more likely to be called back for an interview compared to an older worker. Age discrimination is also reflected in the time it takes for older adults to find a job. Many workers aged 45 or 50 and older who have lost their jobs often encounter difficulties in finding a new job, even if they are physically and intellectually fit (Hendels 2008 ; Malul 2009 ). Despite the fact that older workers are considered to be more reliable (McGregor and Gray 2002 ) and to have better business ethics, they are perceived as less flexible or adaptable, less productive and having higher salary expectations (Henkens and Schippers 2008 ). Employers who hesitated in hiring older workers also mentioned factors such as wages and non-wage labor costs that rise more steeply with age and the difficulties firms may face in adjusting working conditions to meet the requirements of employment protection rules (Keese et al. 2006 ).

Thus, we have a paradox. On one hand, people live longer, the retirement age is rising, and older people in good health want or need to keep working. At the same time, employers seek more and more young workers all the time. This phenomenon might marginalize skilled and experience workers, and take away their ability to make a living and accrue pension rights. Thus, employers’ reluctance to hire older workers creates a cycle of poverty and distress, burdening the already overcrowded social institutions and negatively affecting the economy’s productivity and GDP (Axelrad et al. 2013 ).

2.1 OECD countries during the post 2008 crisis

The recent global economic crisis took an outsized toll on young workers across the globe, especially in advanced economies, which were hit harder and recovered more slowly than emerging markets and developing economies. Does this fact imply that the labor market in Spain and Portugal (with relatively high youth unemployment rates) is less “friendly” toward younger individuals than the labor market in Israel and Germany (with a relatively low youth unemployment rate)? Has the market in Spain and Portugal become less “friendly” toward young people during the last 4 years? We argue that the main factor causing the increasing youth unemployment rates in Spain and Portugal is the poor state of the economy in the last 4 years in these countries rather than a change in attitudes toward hiring young people.

OECD data indicate that adult unemployment is significantly lower than youth unemployment. The global economic crisis has hit young people very hard. In 2010, there were nearly 15 million unemployed youngsters in the OECD area, about four million more than at the end of 2007 (Scarpetta et al. 2010 ).

From an international perspective, and unlike other developed countries, Israel has a young age structure, with a high birthrate and a small fraction of elderly population. Israel has a mandatory retirement age, which differs for men (67) and women (62), and the labor force participation of older workers is relatively high (Stier and Endeweld 2015 ), therefore, we believe that Israel is an interesting case for studying.

The Israeli labor market is extremely flexible (e.g. hiring and firing are relatively easy), and mobile (workers can easily move between jobs) (Peretz 2016 ). Focusing on Israel’s labor market, we want to check whether this is true for older Israeli workers as well, and whether there is a difference between young and older workers.

The problem of unemployment among young people in Israel is less severe than in most other developed countries. This low unemployment rate is a result of long-term processes that have enabled the labor market to respond relatively quickly to changes in the economic environment and have reduced structural unemployment. Footnote 2 Furthermore, responsible fiscal and monetary policies, and strong integration into the global market have also promoted employment at all ages. With regard to the differences between younger and older workers in Israel, Stier and Endeweld ( 2015 ) determined that older workers, men and women alike, are indeed less likely to leave their jobs. This finding is similar to other studies showing that older workers are less likely to move from one employer to another. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median employee tenure is generally higher among older workers than younger ones (BLS 2014 ). Movement in and out of the labor market is highest among the youngest workers. However, these young people are re-employed quickly, while older workers have the hardest time finding jobs once they become unemployed. The Bank of Israel calculated the chances of unemployed people finding work between two consecutive quarters using a panel of the Labor Force Survey for the years 1996–2011. Their calculations show that since the middle of the last decade the chances of unemployed people finding a job between two consecutive quarters increased. Footnote 3 However, as noted earlier, as workers age, the duration of their unemployment lengthens. Prolonged unemployment erodes the human capital of the unemployed (Addison et al. 2004 ), which has a particularly deleterious effect on older workers. Thus, the longer the period of unemployment of older workers, the less likely they will find a job (Axelrad and Luski 2017 ). Nevertheless, as Fig.  1 shows, the rates of youth unemployment in Israel are higher than those of older workers.

(Source: Calculated by the authors by using data from the Labor Force survey of the Israeli CBS, 2011)

Unemployed persons and discouraged workers as percentages of the civilian labor force, by age group (Bank of Israel 2011 ). We excluded those living outside settled communities or in institutions. The percentages of discouraged workers are calculated from the civilian labor force after including them in it

We argue that the main reason for this situation is the status quo in the labor market, which is general and not specific to Israel. It applies both to older workers and young workers who have a job. The status quo is evident in the situation in which adults (and young people) already in the labor market manage to keep their jobs, making the entrance of new young people into the labor market more difficult. What we are witnessing is not evidence of a preference for the old over the young, but the maintaining of the status quo.

The rate of employed Israelis covered by collective bargaining agreements increases with age: up to age 35, the rate is less than one-quarter, and between 50 and 64 the rate reaches about one-half. In effect, in each age group between 25 and 60, there are about 100,000 covered employees, and the lower coverage rate among the younger ages derives from the natural growth in the cohorts over time (Bank of Israel 2013 ). The wave of unionization in recent years is likely to change only the age profile of the unionization rate and the decline in the share of covered people over the years, to the extent that it strengthens and includes tens of thousands more employees from the younger age groups. Footnote 4

The fact that the percentage of employees covered by collective agreement increases with age implies that there is a status quo effect. Older workers are protected by collective agreements, and it is hard to dismiss them (Culpepper 2002 ; Palier and Thelen 2010 ). However, young workers enter the workforce with individual contracts and are not protected, making it is easier to change their working conditions and dismiss them.

To complete the picture, Fig.  2 shows that the number of layoffs among adults is lower, possibly due to their protection under collective bargaining agreements.

(Source: Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2008, data processed by the authors)

Dismissal of employees in Israel, by age. Percentage of total employed persons ages 20–75 and over including those dismissed

In order to determine the real difference between the difficulties of older versus younger individuals in finding work, we have to eliminate the effect of the status quo in the labor market. For example, if we removed all of the workers from the labor market, what would be the difference between the difficulties of older people versus younger individuals in finding work? In the next section we will analyze the probability of younger and older individuals moving from unemployment to employment when we control for the status quo. We will do so by considering only individuals who have not been employed at least part of the previous year.

3 Estimating the chances of finding a job and research hypotheses

Based on the literature and the classic premise that young workers are more vulnerable to economic shocks (ILO 2011 ), we posit that:

H 1 : The unemployment rate of young people stems mainly from the characteristics of the labor market and less from their personal attributes.

Based on the low hiring rate of older workers (OECD 2006 ) and the literature about age discrimination against older workers in labor markets (Axelrad et al. 2013 ; Lahey 2005 ), we hypothesis that:

H 2 : The difficulty face by unemployed older workers searching for a job stems mainly from their age and less from the characteristics of the labor market.

To assess the chances of younger and older workers finding a job, we used a logit regression model that has been validated in previous studies (Brander et al. 2002 ; Flug and Kassir 2001 ). Being employed was the dependent variable, and the characteristics of the respondents (age, gender, ethnicity and education) were the independent variables. The dependent variable was nominal and dichotomous with two categories: 0 or 1. We defined the unemployed as those who did not work at all during the last year or worked less than 9 months last year. The dependent variable was a dummy variable of the current employment situation, which received the value of 1 if the individual worked last week and 0 otherwise.

3.1 The model

i—individual i, P i —the chances that individual i will have a full or part time job (at the time of the survey). \(\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle-}$}}{\text{X}}_{\text{i}}\) —vector of explanatory variables of individual i. Each of the variables in vector \(\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle-}$}}{X}_{i}\) was defined as a dummy variable with the value of 1 or 0. β—vector of marginal addition to the log of the odds ratio. For example, if the explanatory variable was the log of 13 years or more of schooling, then the log odds ratio refers to the marginal addition of 13 years of education to the chances of being employed, compared with 12 years of education or less.

The regression allowed us to predict the probability of an individual finding a job. The dependent variable was the natural base log of the probability ratio P divided by (1 − P) that a particular individual would find a job. The odds ratio from the regression answers the question of how much more likely it is that an individual will find a job if he or she has certain characteristics. The importance of the probability analysis is the consideration of the marginal contribution of each feature to the probability of finding a job.

3.2 The sample

We used data gathered from the 2011 Labor Force Survey Footnote 5 of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Footnote 6 which is a major survey conducted annually among households. The survey follows the development of the labor force in Israel, its size and characteristics, as well as the extent of unemployment and other trends. Given our focus on working age individuals, we excluded all of the respondents under the age of 18 or over the age of 59. The data sample includes only the Jewish population, because structural problems in the non-Jewish sector made it difficult to estimate this sector using the existing data only. The sample does not include the ultra-Orthodox population because of their special characteristics, particularly the limited involvement of men in this population in the labor market.

The base population is individuals who did not work at all during the past year or worked less than 9 months last year (meaning that they worked but were unemployed at least part of last year). To determine whether they managed to find work after 1 year of unemployment, we used the question on the ICBS questionnaire, “Did you work last week?” We used the answer to this question to distinguish between those who had succeeded in finding a job and those who did not. The data include individuals who were out of the labor force Footnote 7 at the time of the survey, but exclude those who were not working for medical reasons (illness, disability or other medical restrictions) or due to their mandatory military service. Footnote 8

3.3 Data and variables

The survey contains 104,055 respondents, but after omitting all of the respondents under the age of 18 or above 59, those who were outside the labor force for medical reasons or due to mandatory military service, non-Jews, the ultra-Orthodox, and those who worked more than 9 months last year, the sample includes 13,494 individuals (the base population). Of these, 9409 are individuals who had not managed to find work, and 4085 are individuals who were employed when the survey was conducted.

The participants’ ages range between 18 and 59, with the average age being 33.07 (SD 12.88) and the median age being 29. 40.8% are males; 43.5% have an academic education; 52.5% are single, and 53.5% of the respondents have no children under 17.

3.4 Dependent and independent variables

While previous studies have assessed the probability of being unemployed in the general population, our study examines a more specific case: the probability of unemployed individuals finding a job. Therefore, we use the same explanatory variables that have been used in similar studies conducted in Israel (Brander et al. 2002 ; Flug and Kassir 2001 ), which were also based on an income survey and the Labor Force Survey of the Central Bureau of Statistics.

3.5 The dependent variable—being employed

According to the definition of the CBS, employed persons are those who worked at least 1 h during a given week for pay, profit or other compensation.

3.6 Independent variables

We divided the population into sub-groups of age intervals: 18–24, 25–29, 30–44, 45–54 and 55–59, according to the sub-groups provided by the CBS. We then assigned a special dummy variable to each group—except the 30–44 sub-group, which is considered as the base group. Age is measured as a dummy variable, and is codded as 1 if the individual belongs to the age group, and 0 otherwise. Age appears in the regression results as a variable in and of itself. Its significance is the marginal contribution of each age group to the probability of finding work relative to the base group (ages 30–44), and also as an interaction variable.

3.6.2 Gender

This variable is codded as 1 if the individual is female and 0 otherwise. Gender also appears in the interaction with age.

3.6.3 Marital status

Two dummy variables are used: one for married respondents and one for those who are divorced or widowed. In accordance with the practice of the CBS, we combined the divorced and the widowed into one variable. This variable is a dummy variable that is codded as 1 if the individual belongs to the appropriate group (divorced/widowed or married) and 0 otherwise. The base group is those who are single.

3.6.4 Education

This variable is codded as 1 if the individual has 13 or more years of schooling, and 0 otherwise. The variable also appears in interactions between it and the age variable.

3.6.5 Vocational education

This variable is codded as 1 if the individual has a secondary school diploma that is not an academic degree or another diploma, and 0 otherwise.

3.6.6 Academic education

This variable is codded as 1 if the individual has any university degree (bachelors, masters or Ph.D.) and 0 otherwise.

3.6.7 Children

In accordance with similar studies that examined the probability of employment in Israel (Brander et al. 2002 ), we define children as those up to age 17. This variable is a dummy variable that is codded as 1 if the respondents have children under the age of 17, and 0 otherwise.

3.6.8 Ethnicity

This variable is codded as 1 if the individual was born in an Arabic-speaking country, in an African country other than South Africa, or in an Asian country, or was born in Israel but had a father who was born in one of these countries. Israel generally refers to such individuals as Mizrahim. Respondents who were not Mizrahim received a value of 0. The base group in our study are men aged 30–44 who are not Mizrahim.

We also assessed the interactions between the variables. For example, the interaction between age and the number of years of schooling is the contribution of education (i.e., 13 years of schooling) to the probability of finding a job for every age group separately relative to the situation of having less education (i.e., 12 years of education). The interaction between age and gender is the contribution of gender (i.e., being a female respondent) to the probability of finding a job for each age group separately relative to being a man.

To demonstrate the differences between old and young individuals in their chances of finding a job, we computed the rates of those who managed to find a job relative to all of the respondents in the sample. Table  1 shows that the rate of those who found a job declines with age. For example, 36% of the men age 30–44 found a job, but those rates drop to 29% at the age of 45–54 and decline again to 17% at the age of 55–59. As for women, 31% of them aged 30–44 found a job, but those rates drop to 20% at the age of 45–54 and decline again to 9% at the age of 55–59.

In an attempt to determine the role of education in finding employment, we created Model 1 and Model 2, which differ only in terms of how we defined education. In Model 1 the sample is divided into two groups: those with up to 12 years of schooling (the base group) and those with 13 or more years of schooling. In Model 2 there are three sub-groups: those with a university degree, those who have a vocational education, and the base group that has only a high school degree.

Table  2 shows that the probability of a young person (age 18–24) getting a job is larger than that of an individual aged 30–44 who belongs to the base group (the coefficient of the dummy variable “age 18–24” is significant and positive). Similarly, individuals who are older than 45 are less likely than those in the base group to find work.

Women aged 30–44 are less likely to be employed than men in the same age group. Additionally, when we compare women aged 18–24 to women aged 30–44, we see that the chances of the latter being employed are lower. Older women (45+) are much less likely than men of the same age group to find work. Additionally, having children under the age of 17 at home reduces the probability of finding a job.

A university education increases the probability of being employed for both men and women aged 30–44. Furthermore, for older people (55+) an academic education reduces the negative effect of age on the probability of being employed. While a vocational education increases the likelihood of finding a job for those aged 30–44, such a qualification has no significant impact on the prospects of older people.

Interestingly, being a Mizrahi Jew increases the probability of being employed.

In addition, we estimated the models separately twice—for the male and for the female population. For male and female, the probability of an unemployed individual finding a job declines with age.

Analyzing the male population (Table  3 ) reveals that those aged 18–24 are more likely than the base group (ages 30–44) to find a job. However, the significance level is relatively low, and in Model 2, this variable is not significant at all. Those 45 and older are less likely than the base group (ages 30–44) to find a job. Married men are more likely than single men to be employed. However, divorced and widowed men are less likely than single men to find a job. For men, the presence in their household of children under the age of 17 further reduces the probability of their being employed. Mizrahi men aged 18–24 are more likely to be employed than men of the same age who are from other regions.

Table  3 illustrates that educated men are more likely to find work than those who are not. However, in Model 1, at the ages 18–29 and 45–54, the probability of finding a job for educated men is less than that of uneducated males. Among younger workers, this might be due to excess supply—the share of academic degree owners has risen, in contrast to almost no change in the overall share of individuals receiving some other post-secondary certificate (Fuchs 2015 ). Among older job seeking men, this might be due to the fact that the increase in employment among men during 2002–2010 occurred mainly in part-time jobs (Bank of Israel 2011 ). In Model 2, men with an academic or vocational education have a better chance of finding a job, but at the group age of 18–24, those with a vocational education are less likely to find a job compared to those without a vocational education. The reason might be the lack of experience of young workers (18–24), experience that is particularly needed in jobs that require vocational education (Salvisberg and Sacchi 2014 ).

Analyzing the female population (Table  3 ) reveals that women between 18 and 24 are more likely to be employed than those who are 30–44, and those who are 45–59 are less likely to be employed than those who are 30–44. The probability of finding a job for women at the age of 25 to 29 is not significantly different from the probability of the base group (women ages 30–44).

Married women are less likely than single women to be employed. Women who have children under the age of 17 are less likely to be employed than women who do not have dependents that age. According to Model 2, Mizrahi women are more likely to be employed compared to women from other regions. According to both models, women originally from Asia or Africa ages 25–29 have a better chance of being employed than women the same age from other regions. Future research should examine this finding in depth to understand it.

With regard to education, in Model 1 (Table  3 ), where we divided the respondents simply on the question of whether they had a post-high school education, women who were educated were more likely to find work than those who were not. However, in the 18–29 age categories, educated women were less likely to find a job compared to uneducated women, probably due to the same reason cited above for men in the same age group—the inflation of academic degrees (Fuchs 2015 ). These findings become more nuanced when we consider the results of Model 2. There, women with an academic or vocational education have a better chance of finding a job, but at the ages of 18–24 those with an academic education are less likely to find a job than those without an academic education. Finally, at the ages of 25–29, those with a vocational education have a better chance of finding a job than those without a vocational education, due to the stagnation in the overall share of individuals receiving post-secondary certificate (Fuchs 2015 ).

Thus, based on the results in Table  3 , we can draw several conclusions. First, the effect of aging on women is more severe than the impact on men. In addition, the “marriage premium” is positive for men and negative for women. Divorced or widowed men lose their “marriage premium”. Finally, having children at home has a negative effect on both men and women—almost at the same magnitude.

5 Unemployment as a function of the business cycle

To determine whether unemployment of young workers is caused by the business cycle, we examined the unemployment figures in 34 OECD countries in 2007–2009, years of economic crisis, and in 2009–2011, years of recovery and economic growth. For each country, we considered the data on unemployment among young workers (15–24) and older adults (55–64) and calculated the difference between 2009 and 2007 and between 2011 and 2009 for both groups. The data were taken from OECD publications and included information about the growth rates from 2007 to 2011. Our assessment of unemployment rates in 34 OECD countries reveals that the average rate of youth unemployment in 2007 was 13.4%, compared to 18.9% in 2011, so the delta of youth unemployment before and after the economic crisis was 5.55. The average rate of adult unemployment in 2007 was 4% compared to 5.8% in 2011, so the delta for adults was 1.88. Both of the differences are significantly different from zero, and the delta for young people is significantly larger than the delta for adults. These results indicate that among young people (15–24), the increase in unemployment due to the crisis was very large.

An OLS model of the reduced form was estimated to determine whether unemployment is a function of the business cycle, which is represented by the growth rate. The variables GR2007, GR2009 and GR2011 are the rate of GDP growth in 2007, 2009 and 2011 respectively ( Appendix ). The explanatory variable is either GR2009 minus GR2007 or GR2011 minus GR2009. In both periods, 2007–2009 and 2009–2011, the coefficient of the change in growth rates is negative and significant for young people, but insignificant for adults. Thus, it seems that the unemployment rates of young people are affected by the business cycle, but those of older workers are not. In a time of recession (2007–2009), unemployment among young individuals increases whereas for older individuals the increase in unemployment is not significant. In recovery periods (2009–2011), unemployment among young individuals declines, whereas the drop in unemployment among older individuals is not significant (Table  4 ).

6 Summary and conclusions

The purpose of this paper was to show that while the unemployment rates of young workers are higher than those of older workers, the data alone do not necessarily tell the whole story. Our findings confirm our first hypothesis, that the high unemployment rate of young people stems mainly from the characteristics of the labor market and less from their personal attributes. Using data from Israel and 34 OECD countries, we demonstrated that a country’s growth rate is the main factor that determines youth unemployment. However, the GDP rate of growth cannot explain adult unemployment. Our results also support our second hypothesis, that the difficulties faced by unemployed older workers when searching for a job are more a function of their age than the overall business environment.

Indeed, one limitation of the study is the fact that we could not follow individuals over time and capture individual changes. We analyze a sample of those who have been unemployed in the previous year and then analyze the probability of being employed in the subsequent year but cannot take into account people could have found a job in between which they already lost again. Yet, in this sample we could isolate and analyze those who did not work last year and look at their employment status in the present. By doing so, we found out that the rate of those who found a job declines with age, and that the difficulties faced by unemployed older workers stems mainly from their age.

To solve both of these problems, youth unemployment and older workers unemployment, countries need to adopt different methods. Creating more jobs will help young people enter the labor market. Creating differential levels for the minimum wage and supplementing the income of older workers with earned income tax credits will help older people re-enter the job market.

Further research may explore the effect of structural and institutional differences which can also determine individual unemployment vs. employment among different age groups.

In addition to presenting a theory about the factors that affect the differences in employment opportunities for young people and those over 45, the main contribution of this paper is demonstrating the validity of our contention that it is age specifically that works to keep older people out of the job market, whereas it is the business cycle that has a deleterious effect on the job prospects of younger people. Given these differences, these two sectors of unemployment require different approaches for solving their employment problems. The common wisdom maintains that the high level of youth unemployment requires policy makers to focus on programs targeting younger unemployed individuals. However, we argue that given the results of our study, policy makers must adopt two different strategies to dealing with unemployment in these two groups.

6.1 Policy implications

In order to cope with the problem of youth unemployment, we must create more jobs. When the recession ends in Portugal and Spain, the problem of youth unemployment should be alleviated. Since there is no discrimination against young people—evidenced by the fact that when the aggregate level of economic activity and the level of adult employment are high, youth employment is also high—creating more jobs in general by enhancing economic growth should improve the employment rates of young workers.

In contrast, the issue of adult unemployment requires a different solution due to the fact that their chances of finding a job are related specifically to their age. One solution might be a differential minimum wage for older and younger individuals and earned income tax credits (EITC) Footnote 9 for older individuals, as Malul and Luski ( 2009 ) suggested.

According to this solution, the government should reduce the minimum wage for older individuals. As a complementary policy and in order to avoid differences in wages between older and younger individuals, the former would receive an earned income tax credit so that their minimum wage together with their EITC would be equal to the minimum wage of younger individuals. Earned income tax credits could increase employment among older workers while increasing their income. For older workers, EITCs are more effective than a minimum wage both in terms of employment and income. Such policies of a differential minimum wage plus an EITC can help older adults and constitute a kind of social safety net for them. Imposing a higher minimum wage exclusively for younger individuals may be beneficial in encouraging them to seek more education.

Young workers who face layoffs as a result of their high minimum wage (Kalenkoski and Lacombe 2008 ) may choose to increase their investment in their human capital (Nawakitphaitoon 2014 ). The ability of young workers to improve their professional level protects them against the unemployment that might result from a higher minimum wage (Malul and Luski 2009 ). For older workers, if the minimum wage is higher than their productivity, they will be unemployed. This will be true even if their productivity is higher than the value of their leisure. Such a situation might result in an inefficient allocation between work and leisure for this group. One way to fix this inefficient allocation without reducing the wages of older individuals is to use the EITC, which is actually a subsidy for this group. This social policy might prompt employers to substitute older workers with a lower minimum wage for more expensive younger workers, making it possible for traditional factories to continue their domestic production. However, a necessary condition for this suggestion to work is the availability of efficient systems of training and learning. Axelrad et al. ( 2013 ) provided another justification for subsidizing the work of older individuals. They found that stereotypes about older workers might lead to a distorted allocation of the labor force. Subsidizing the work of older workers might correct this distortion. Ultimately, however, policy makers must understand that they must implement two different approaches to dealing with the problems of unemployment among young people and in the older population.

For example, in the US, the UK and Portugal, we witnessed higher rates of growth during late 1990 s and lower rates of youth unemployment compared to 2011.

Bank of Israel Annual Report—2013, http://www.boi.org.il/en/NewsAndPublications/RegularPublications/Research%20Department%20Publications/BankIsraelAnnualReport/Annual%20Report-2013/p5-2013e.pdf .

http://www.boi.org.il/en/NewsAndPublications/RegularPublications/Research%20Department%20Publications/RecentEconomicDevelopments/develop136e.pdf .

The Labor Force Survey is a major survey conducted by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics among households nationwide. The survey follows the development of the labor force in Israel, its size and characteristics, as well as the extent of unemployment and other trends. The publication contains detailed data on labor force characteristics such as their age, years of schooling, type of school last attended, and immigration status. It is also a source of information on living conditions, mobility in employment, and many other topics.

The survey population is the permanent (de jure) population of Israel aged 15 and over. For more details see: http://www.cbs.gov.il/publications13/1504/pdf/intro04_e.pdf .

When we looked at those who had not managed to find a job at the time of the survey, we included all individuals who were not working, regardless of whether they were discouraged workers, volunteers or had other reasons. As long as they are not out of the labor force due to medical reasons or their mandatory military service, we classified them as "did not manage to find a job."

Until 2012, active soldiers were considered outside the labor force in the samples of the CBS.

EITC is a refundable tax credit for low to moderate income working individuals and couples.

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Authors’ contributions

HA, MM and IL conceptualized and designed the study. HA collected and managed study data, HA and IL carried out statistical analyses. HA drafted the initial manuscript. MM and IL reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Hila Axelrad

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Axelrad, H., Malul, M. & Luski, I. Unemployment among younger and older individuals: does conventional data about unemployment tell us the whole story?. J Labour Market Res 52 , 3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-018-0237-9

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Questions to Address Youth Unemployment

We need to spur fresh thinking in this field even as we test and evaluate diverse approaches that promote youth economic empowerment in developing countries.

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By Reeta Roy Sep. 14, 2010

Next week, more than 300 people will convene at the Global Youth Enterprise & Livelihoods Development Conference in Washington, DC. I will be joining several of our partners, other funders, international NGOs, and youth innovators to discuss tough questions and promising solutions related to employment and entrepreneurship for young people. 

Approximately 1.3 billion young people between the ages of 12 and 24 live in developing countries. The pace of economic growth in many of these countries will be insufficient to create the 1 billion jobs needed over the next decade as youth transition into the workforce. And while there is an increase in basic education levels, millions of young people in developing countries still face bleak employment opportunities. Young women have even higher rates of unemployment and face additional systemic, social and cultural barriers.

Thus, there is an urgent need for new approaches to create economic opportunities for young people.  If successful, the effects of youth employment and productivity will have inter-generational impact with multiplier effects from wealth creation and growth to social stability and new leadership.

This requires a continuum of interventions that equip young people to change their own lives. Access to education, knowledge, skills, social networks and capital are the building blocks of this change.  How do we enable young people to stay in school and complete their secondary education?  Is micro-franchising a potential solution to entrepreneurship and job creation? How do we expand technology applications to equip young people with employability skills and connect them to ideas, mentors and resources? What’s required to encourage financial institutions to sustainably offer youth-inclusive financial education and services to enable young people to save money, build assets and manage financial resources for their education or to start a business?

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We need to spur fresh thinking in this field even as we test and evaluate diverse approaches that promote youth economic empowerment in developing countries, particularly in Africa. We have much work ahead of us to generate approaches that work at scale.

We believe that the most compelling ideas will come from those with the greatest stake in finding solutions—young people themselves.  We’ve already seen an explosion of activities by young people around the world to tackle questions facing them, and we would like to tap into this innovation.  As funders and practitioners, we need ways to engage young people in identifying needs, developing solutions and delivering them in ways that are trusted and accessible by youth and their families. 

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• Research article
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• Published: 10 December 2019

Living in the shadow of unemployment -an unhealthy life situation: a qualitative study of young people from leaving school until early adult life

• Anne Hammarström   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4095-7961 1 , 2 &
• Christina Ahlgren   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5965-5368 1 , 3  

BMC Public Health volume  19 , Article number:  1661 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Despite the magnitude of youth unemployment there is a lack of studies, which explore the relations between health experiences and labour market position in various contexts. The aim of this paper was to analyse health experiences among young people in NEET (not in education, employment or training) in relation to labour market position from leaving school until early adult life.

The population consists of everyone (six women, eight men) who became unemployed directly after leaving compulsory school in a town in Northern Sweden. Repeated personal interviews were performed from age 16 until age 33. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Health experiences can be viewed as a contextual process, related to the different phases of leaving school, entering the labour market, becoming unemployed and becoming employed. Perceived relief and hope were related to leaving compulsory school, while entering the labour market was related to setbacks and disappointments as well as both health-deteriorating and health-promoting experiences depending on the actual labour market position. Our overarching theme of “Living in the shadow of unemployment – an unhealthy life situation” implies that it is not only the actual situation of being unemployed that is problematic but that the other phases are also coloured by earlier experiences of unemployment .

A focus on young people’s health experiences of transitions from school into the labour market brings a new focus on the importance of macroeconomic influence on social processes and contextualised mechanisms from a life-course perspective.

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Since the great depression around 1930 quantitative research has demonstrated that unemployment is related to deteriorated health, with both mental and somatic symptoms, deteriorated health behaviour and increased mortality [ 1 , 2 ].

However, there is still a lack of understanding of why these relations exist. What is it in unemployment that increases the risk of ill health? What are the mediating mechanisms? Various models have been suggested in order to explain the relationships between unemployment and ill health. Six main models can be identified. The economic deprivation model suggests that the financially strained situation of the unemployed is the actual cause of ill health [ 3 ]. The stress model implies that unemployment is a chronic stressor with negative impact on health status [ 4 ]. The model of latent functions was developed by Marie Jahoda [ 5 ] based on her research about what needs, besides the economic ones, a good job should fulfil. These needs are called “latent functions” and they imply that employment should give:

* a time structure of the day

* regularly shared experiences and contacts with others

* goals and purposes that transcend those of the employed

* personal status and identity

* enforced activity

The model implies that unemployment causes ill health due to the absence of these five needs (or functions) which (to a smaller or larger extent) are provided by a job.

The control model states that the potential to have control over one’s life is crucial for health and well-being. The model has been developed in a variety of theoretical traditions, and empirical research has shown the importance for health of maintaining control during unemployment [ 6 ]. The work involvement model means that low work involvement during unemployment is protective of one’s health status [ 7 ] while the lack of support model implies that unemployment is related to deteriorated health due to increased social isolation [ 7 ].

A quantitative testing of these six models shows that the capacity of the models to explain the connection between unemployment and ill health varied [ 8 ]. The model of latent functions was most successful, followed by the economic deprivation model. The social support and the control models were also fairly good. The work involvement scale and the stress model demonstrated the smallest explanatory power.

Even though the theoretical development and testing of models is a step forward for understanding why unemployment is related to deteriorated health, quantitative methods are based on prefixed answer alternatives, leaving no space for new understandings to be discovered. In order for research to develop knowledge about a poorly understood phenomena, qualitative methods are needed. The results from qualitative research can later on can be tested with quantitative methods to draw conclusions about cause and effect. But there is an almost total lack of inductive qualitative research about health experiences among those who are unemployed. Some of the few qualitative studies in the field are summarized below.

A qualitative study among participants over age 18 from the time of economic recession in Sweden illustrates the importance of gaining better understanding of the experiences of hardship and perceptions of health among those who lose their jobs [ 9 ]. Another qualitative study of unemployed persons, aged 18 and above with mental health problems, was performed in Germany [ 10 ]. The study illustrates barriers and facilitators for help seeking on three levels: mental health literacy, stigma and discrimination of them as help-seekers and structures and conditions of health care such as miscommunication and GPs lack of interest in mental health problems.

Many young people, who do not have jobs, are not officially registered as unemployed. The concept of NEET – not in employment, education or training – has been increasingly used in order to define a group of mostly young people who are disengaged from the labour market [ 11 ]. This group is difficult to reach in both quantitative and in qualitative studies and thus there is a need for more knowledge about their experiences and life situation [ 12 ].

A qualitative study from Sweden about health experiences of young people in NEET demonstrates the importance of contextualisation of health experiences [ 13 ]. Health was created in relation to others and the participants felt good when closely connected to others. Health was created in relation to severe hardship (like drugs and various forms of violence) as well as in relation to the participants’ ability to adapt and respond to challenges. Thus, health among NEETs was viewed as constructed within the social and cultural context in which the ability to adapt and respond to challenges are crucial. The participants had a diverse background, but still shared common experiences related to feelings of inclusion and exclusion. Thus, health was viewed as created both on an individual and collective level.

The transition from school to work can be influenced by macroeconomic factors such as recession also among young people who are not in NEET. A qualitative study of students [ 14 ] showed that the crisis had negative impact on the participants’ mental health by creating feelings of instability as well as difficulties in planning for the future.

The participants clearly experienced disengagement from community participation manifested in feelings of isolation, lack of interest, and distrust. Nevertheless, the respondents described a proactive attitude to deal with the problems they were facing, without giving up their commitment to personal fulfilment.

These qualitative studies demonstrate that open interviews about health experiences among different groups of unemployed can provide a deeper insight into why these health experiences occur as well as in which context they develop. Therefore, qualitative methods are needed in order to analyse such experiences. All research, especially qualitative, must be contextualised in order to increase the trustworthiness and the transferability of the findings.

We have demonstrated in a review that most quantitative research on unemployment and ill health lacks such contextualisation as very few studies have analysed the results separately per subgroup of population in relation to, for example, age and gender [ 15 ]. Most empirical and theoretical research on this topic has been performed in adults, in spite of the growing evidence of both the short-term [ 16 , 17 , 18 ] and the long-term [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ] negative health consequences of unemployment early in life. The aim of this paper was to analyse health experiences among young people in NEET in relation to labour market position from leaving school until early adult life.

Interviews for this qualitative study were performed within the Northern Sweden Cohort [ 23 ]. The cohort was created in 1981 in a medium-sized (with about 70,000 inhabitants) industrial town in Northern Sweden. The town is representative of medium-sized industrial towns in Sweden as regards the sociodemographic factors and labour market conditions. The cohort has also been shown to be representative of the country as a whole in relation to socio-demographics and socioeconomic factors as well as in relation to health status and health behaviour [ 23 ]. The labour market is dominated by manufacturing and mineral extraction, with a steel company and a large harbour. Other major employers are the public sector and a technical university. At the time of the interviews, unemployment in the town was twice as high rate as in the rest of Sweden and there was more workforce immigration from Finland. The social democrats had ruled the area for decades together with smaller socialist parties.

In order to tackle the growing rate of youth unemployment the Swedish government introduced active labour market policy measures for young people from the beginning of the 1980s. These measures included educational and vocational activities directed towards unemployed young people with the objective that no one aged 18 years or below should be outside education or employment. Subsidised employment, with work tasks that did not compete with regular jobs, was the most common labour market measure for young people at the time when the cohort participants were young. Labour market policy measures for people below 18 years were financed by the state with study assistance instead of salary and were intended to guarantee activity for 8 h a day for 40 weeks for unemployed in the age-group 16–18 years. In 1982, the time for reimbursement for these programmes was somewhat increased beyond 40 weeks and in 1984, a law was introduced stating that unemployed aged 18–19 should participate in labour market measures at least 4 h a day and for a minimum wage ([ 16 ] pp 4). This meant that, by international standards, Sweden had a very active labour market policy aimed at young people during the 1980s. For the participants in our study, these active labour market policy programmes meant that they did not become permanently long-term unemployed but rather moved between unemployment, various labour market programmes and short periods of temporary employment. However, lack of resources due to regional differences in number of unemployed could have been the reason why cohort participants were not contacted by the youth centre and instead became unemployed.

Design and ethics

A qualitative study design was chosen. Repeated interviews were conducted with young women and men aged from 16 to about 30, concerning their experiences of work and unemployment and associated health experiences. The interviews were analysed with qualitative content analysis.

Participants

The interviews were conducted with a subsample of participants in the Northern Swedish Cohort – a prospective longitudinal cohort study. The cohort consists of all pupils ( n  = 1083) in their last year of compulsory school (age 16) in all nine schools in a medium-sized town in Northern Sweden [ 23 ]. The cohort has been followed over time with questionnaires about their health status and life circumstances. A subsample of the cohort has been followed with personal interviews at the age intervals 16–17, 21–23 and 28–33 years. This subsample constitutes the base for this study.

The subsample consists of all cohort participants who became unemployed directly after compulsory school (six women and eight men). They had all left school at the age of 16 (some of them without full grades) and were all of working-class background. They were interviewed two to four times per individual during a time period from age 16 until age 33 (between 1981 and 1998).

Data collection

Individual audio-recorded structured interviews were performed by the PI (principle investigator) of the cohort (AH, Anne Hammarström), a medical doctor and specialist in social medicine. The interviews dealt with daily activities in various spheres, possibilities of influencing one’s life, dreams for the future and experiences of health and unemployment/work (see Interview Guide in the Additional file  1 ). The interviews were performed in the informant’s home or at the PI’s workplace and lasted for about 1 to 1½ hours. The same informants were interviewed two to four times at different ages. In total 37 interviews constituted the base for the analysis. Health at age 30 was collected both from the interviews and from the informants’ answers to questions about health in a questionnaire to the whole cohort.

Data analysis

The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis as described by Graneheim and Lundman [ 24 ]).Qualitative content analysis is used in systematic analysis of verbal communication [ 25 ] and is useful in analysing people’s experiences and reflexions [ 26 ]. Furthermore, it is a suitable method for focusing on similarities and differences in the material [ 24 ].

The interviews were read through several times by both authors to get a sense of the whole. Thereafter, the analysis was performed in several steps using the software package Open Code [ 27 ]. In each step CA (Christina Ahlgren) did a preliminary analysis, which then was discussed between the authors. In cases of disagreement, we reread the transcripts in order to catch the initial meaning and adjusted the interpretations of codes and categories’ until agreement was reached. In the first step of the analysis, the text was divided into meaning units, each comprising several words, sentences, or paragraphs containing aspects of health during employment and unemployment. After that the meaning units were labelled with codes and sorted into content areas. A content area is a rough structure of content that can be identified with little interpretation. The content areas in this study were parts of the text dealing with the informants’ experiences of unemployment and employment periods at different ages, which resulted in four phases defined as leaving the school phase, entering the labour market phase, the unemployment phase and the employment phase. Thirdly, codes with similar meanings were summed into categories with subcategories. Categories can be seen as manifest interpretations of the text and should answer the question “What?” [ 25 ]. Categories can include subcategories. In this study categories and subcategories were formed through interpretations of codes representing the informants’ experiences of unemployment and employment and associated aspects of health. Fourthly, a theme was suggested, through interpretation of the underlying meaning of health and health problems related to the experiences described in the categories. A theme could be seen as an interpretation of the latent content of the text and answers the question “How?” [ 24 ]. Sub-categories, categories and a theme are presented in Table  1 .

In order to further, achieve trustworthiness the two researchers from different fields of expertise (family medicine/social medicine and physiotherapy) worked in parallel during the whole analysis process and discussed the findings until agreement was reached. This is in accordance with the process of triangulation [ 24 , 28 ]. The findings were also discussed with other researchers in the field and found trustworthy.

The analysis resulted in a tentative process of the development of positive health or health problems by interpreting the informant’s feelings and experiences of unemployment and employment from leaving school at age 16 to adulthood at age 32. The process is described in the text and in Fig.  1 .

The figure describes a tentative process of the relationship between the informants’ experiences and feelings (illustrated in sub-categories and categories) during phases of unemployment and employment from leaving school at 16 year of age until 30 years of age and how their experiences could be related to positive health symptoms and deteriorating health. + denotes experiences or feelings associated with positive health -denotes experiences or feelings associated with deteriorating health

The informant’s experiences during each phase are described in six categories, distributed over the four phases. Leaving the school phase is characterised by the category “Perceiving relief and hope”. Entering the labour market phase by the category “Noticing setbacks and disappointments”. The unemployment phase by “Perceiving hopelessness and resignation” and “Perceiving caring responsibilities” and the employment phase by “Perceiving pride and social worthiness”, and “Accepting adverse work situations”. Each category includes subcategories. The theme “Living in the shadow of unemployment – an unhealthy life situation” describes a tentative process between the categories and experiences of health

“Living in the shadow of unemployment – an unhealthy life situation”

The theme is built upon the interviewees’ expressions of experiences and feelings during employment and unemployment phases and our interpretations of how this could be associated with health and health problems. Experiences during unemployment phases were often expressed in terms of passivity, resignation and poverty and were linked to feelings of deteriorated mental health, i.e. dysphoria, depression and low self-confidence. Experiences and feelings counter-balancing deteriorated health during unemployment phases were mostly expressed by women. Employment phases, on the other hand, were mostly mentioned in relation to positive health experiences, i.e. being trusted and a sense of being needed. However, the short-term contracts with a constant risk of being unemployed again induced stress. The fear of unemployment also made them accept non-optimal work environments, although they could affect future health.

Perceiving relief and hope

This category corresponds to leaving the school phase and embraces the first half year after leaving compulsory school at 16 years of age and is dominated by the informants’ positive thoughts directly after leaving compulsory school. They felt relieved at quitting the school they did not like or even hated during the last school years. The reasons for the dislike were multifactorial and included “ teachers are unfair ”, “ school is of no use in real life ”, or “ I was bullied ”. However, some participants also said that school was okay, but that they were “ bored ”. They expressed a desire to become mature by getting a job and earning one’s own money, which also meant being less dependent on parents. Their dreams about the future included both specific occupations and standards of living, for example being able to afford to buy a car of one’s own, or a motor bike, to travel abroad and to buy clothes. The occupations they dreamt of were partly gendered, in that young men dreamt of driving their own lorry or starting a delivery firm while young girls dreamt of working in caring occupations or in shops.

Health issues were not on their agenda, and the feelings expressed were primarily positive.

Noticing setbacks and disappointments

Leaving the school phase gradually passed into Entering the labour market phase at about 17 years of age, when the feelings of an extended holiday faded away and the informants still were out of work.

The category describes the situation most of them faced when their dreams about life after quitting school were slowly crushed. They told about the disappointment when job applications were rejected repeatedly with the notification that they were too young and had no work experience. They had lot of leisure time but no money, which made them dependent on parents’ economic contributions.

Due to the prescribed social/labour market policy, the informants in our study became dependent on employment officers at the youth centre to get work. However, the informants expressed distrust against them and said that the only information they gave was that there were no jobs available unless they were prepared to move south. Neither the 16-year-old participants nor their parents appreciated this advice, because it meant sending a 16-year-old son or daughter to a large city almost 500 miles away. When job training courses were offered via the youth centre, some of the informants found them very positive, while others rejected them as being low-paid and not real jobs. Some of the informants had succeeded by themselves in getting jobs for short periods, for example in workplaces they had come into contact with during trainee jobs when still at school.

In this phase as well, all informants assured that they were in good health, although some suffered from health problems, for example congenital hip disease, allergy and headache. These were not considered as health problems, but just something they had. On the other hand, they expressed feelings of disappointment when they talked about the conflicting situation between their hopes for a job and the setbacks with repeated rejections of job applications.

Perceiving hopelessness and resignation

This category describe the informants’ experiences during unemployment. However, neither the unemployment nor the employment situation was permanent over the years. Instead they altered between the unemployment phase and the employment phase and the time spent in each phase varied between individuals. Although informants perceived the first months of unemployment as an extended school holiday, when they were free to do whatever they liked, it became boring after a while. With time and still alternating between short temporary employment and unemployment, it was experienced as extremely discouraging. The unemployment situation led to a very passive lifestyle among informants of all ages, although somewhat differently expressed with age. The common response to the question What do you do during the days? was “I do nothing ”. Among the young informants still living with their parents, it led to a reversed structure of the day. Many of them slept long in the mornings to make time pass, “ There’s no point getting up in the morning, because there is nothing to do” and stayed out late in evenings, drinking beer, and carrying on with friends. This resulted in awakening late next day and the vicious circle continued.

Informants who had children or a partner with a job had to get up in the morning, but idleness during the days was experienced as very hard. Despite having a lot of time they found it difficult to find the energy to engage in activities. Much time was spent watching television.

“ You don’t do anything when you’re unemployed. I was restless. When I had money I could drive around in the car and busy myself with that, and a bit of everything. I looked for work, but I didn’t really do anything useful, if I put it like that. ”

“ Unemployment periods are extremely difficult. … The days are endless. … I sometimes help my sister with her children, when she is at school .”

Their social contacts were solely with other unemployed friends, while those who were employed were busy at work. This made our participants feel even more outside the labour market.

Lack of money and small financial resources were experienced by all informants during the phases of unemployment, although it was more often emphasised in the interviews with men. They talked about their wish to get a driver’s licence and buy a car. Women’s wishes concerned having an apartment of their own and being able to buy nice clothes.

“ The most negative thing about unemployment is the shortage of money. You can’t do anything and when you start a new job, you have to wait a month for the salary”.

Several men said that they had missed jobs due to lack of money to pass a driving test.

“ They needed people and I could have gone on working there if I’d had a licence to drive a heavy lorry .”

Their poor financial situation restricted their possibilities to make use of the spare time which they had too much of. Some participants were entitled to unemployment benefit for a while, but felt stressed about finding a new job during this time. Others were dependent on parents or on social welfare, which was experienced as a defeat.

One of the men admitted that he had stolen when he was out of money. However, he was caught, which ended his criminal career, but this also ruined his economy further, due to the fines he had to pay.

Deteriorating self-confidence and feelings of low worth were expressed in relation to rejections of job applications even several years after leaving school and when employment officers told them that there were no jobs available for them because they lacked formal education. This was even more apparent with longer periods in unemployment, which is illustrated with quotations from a man and a woman in their early twenties.

“ You feel worthless when unemployed. You become work-shy .”

“ Being unemployed gives you low self-confidence. I feel that I know nothing and am not capable of anything. ”

Feelings of irritation and aggression were experienced and handled differently. Some turned to more excessive drinking to hide their low self-confidence while others were more depressed.

“ You don’t get self-confidence from being unemployed. You do nothing but sleep all day and hang around. I was quite aggressive when unemployed .”

The repeated rejections of job applications led to resignation in some of the informants, who thought there was no point in keeping on trying to find a job, which is illustrated with quotations from a young man and a young woman.

“ There’s no point applying for a job, because there are no jobs .”

“ I find it tiresome to be unemployed, but you get used to it and become more and more apathetic. You want to do something, and then you realise that there’s no point in trying, that’s what makes it tiresome .”

“I think it’s no use exerting yourself, you are nothing. You get fed up being out of money .”

Intense smoking and drinking was common among both young men and women during unemployment. In order to counteract the boring passivity during the days, they spent evenings and nights out with friends. This was often accompanied by drinking alcoholic beverages, and some told of excessive drinking. By being in such situations some of the men had been involved in fights and been physically abused, which had given one of them persistent harm, with psychological problems and memory loss. Other men had been involved in criminality and had been accused of theft and assault and drinking and driving, which had resulted in accidents and fines.

Bad eating habits were common when unemployed. The informants told about not having breakfast or lunch and only coffee and cakes during the day and fast food in the evenings. Reasons cited for bad eating habits were passivity and resignation.

“ After a period you didn’t bother to cook at home. You didn’t bother to go out to buy food .”

One young woman was on a constant diet, because she had been bullied in school for being too fat. She also continued dieting as an adult and this affected her little daughter, who was given the same diet food.

Stress-related health symptoms during unemployment phases took physical expressions as stomach-ache and headache. In addition mental health symptoms such as anxiety depression and sleeping problems were often experienced as well as negative moods such as restlessness, aggressiveness, dysphoria and low self-confidence. One young woman talked of several health-damaging feelings during unemployment.

“ Unemployment is very stressful. I feel restless and depressed when I can’t get a job and I get stomach pains and sleeping problems .”

Perceiving caring responsibilities

Gendered caring responsibilities were a recurrent subcategory during the whole follow-up period and seemed to counterbalance some of the negative experiences of unemployment. Although the young women also talked about being passive during unemployment, many of them said that their parents required them to do tasks at home when unemployed. For example, they were expected to help their mothers to take care of younger siblings or to clean the house, something none of the young men talked about.

Several of the women became pregnant in their late teens and thus they found a purpose in life. Being responsible for children and family gave them a more structured day and reduced their patterns of night-life drinking. Also when growing older women told about becoming a mother as a positive interruption of unemployment. To be on parental leave was experienced to give a respectable position in society in contrast to being unemployed.

“ I was out drinking and smoking a lot the last year at school. Nowadays I hardly drink any alcohol at all, I have to take care of the children .”

Unemployment could also be experienced as a relief from strenuous work tasks and a possibility to stay at home with the child, as this woman on parental leave said:.

“ Earlier when unemployed I felt irritated, which I’m not now. Instead I find it a relief not to have to leave my son in day care. ”

Although men did not talk about taking care of children, one man said he had to support his mother financially and therefore had to take on all kinds of jobs he was offered.

Perceiving pride and social worthiness

The category includes the informants’ experiences during periods of employment (employment phases). With time most of the participants managed to find a job on shorter or longer contract basis. Having a job could refer to participation in labour market measures arranged by the youth centre, long- or short-term contracts on the labour market or work tasks arranged by relatives. Mainly positive feelings were expressed about getting employed, although negative feelings were also mentioned.

Having a job was experienced as a sense of being needed, of being a valuable citizen and doing something valuable. This was strengthened by a sense of belonging to a team at the workplace and accompanied with feelings of happiness and pride. This was acknowledged in informants of all ages.

“ The best thing about having a job is being with nice workmates .”

“ The best thing about the job at the steel company is the lads. They are so cool. ” To be treated with respect and expected to be a capable worker was a positive experience which made them feel needed and made them endeavour to do their best.

“ It feels nice, when they come and give you a new task which they think you can manage. It’s nice that they trust you to pull it off so you exert yourself to do it well .”

A woman at age 32, working as an assistant nurse in a home for the elderly, expressed her responsibility for the care recipients:

“ We have this discussion about cleaning the rooms or not. We take care of everything and have great responsibility, both caring and cleaning. But we are there for the residents, aren’t we ?”

A feeling of being trusted and given responsibility was conveyed by some of the 30-year-old informants who had been offered jobs. They had either approached the employers earlier and asked for a job or had previously had temporary employment at the workplace. Being offered employment without having applied for it was accompanied by a sense of having a reputation for being competent, which made them extremely proud.

“ I didn’t have to apply for this position. They had heard of me and came and asked me to work there .”

“I had contacts from before and phoned and introduced myself. I was offered lots of jobs. I think it’s up to you. No jobs comes in your mailbox, you have to get involved. ”

Having a job meant a structuring of the day, getting up in the morning and working 5 days a week. Although some of the young informants found it tiresome it was still seen as part of maturing and taking responsibility. In their early twenties the participants still felt the need for a job to structure their days:

“ A job means that you get up in the morning .”

Having a job also meant that leisure time was felt to be more valuable.

“ When you are unemployed, you have a lot of time, but you don’t do anything. When you have a job, you do something meaningful during the days and also have time to do something in the evenings .”

Having a job was mostly associated with positive feelings. The interviewees’ expressed feelings of pride and being a respectable citizen, someone who took responsibility and was trusted. In order to manage the job, they had to restrict their late nights out drinking and instead living the life of an ordinary “Svensson”. Being in employment phases seemed to be health-promoting. This is understood from the answers “ I’m fine, could not be better ”, “ I have a good life ” and” I feel like a prince ”, which were given by informants with jobs to the question of how they perceived their health.

Social support seemed to be crucial for longer times in employment phases, in terms of parents’ help to find jobs or persuading the participants to study, or partners’ help to create a secure social situation.

Accepting adverse work situations

Many informants also described negative experiences of their labour market situation and had health problems related to their jobs. Informants who worked on short-term contracts for long periods experienced job insecurity . The joy they felt from having a job was accompanied by a perception of stress, as they knew that they would soon have to quit. The insecurity in a temporary job made some informants feel that they had to abstain from complaints, even justified ones, in order to make a good impression and be eligible for a new employment.

“ I have this job and love it, everybody is so nice to me. I can’t continue as the ordinary staff want full-time employment. It feels very sad .”

“ I don’t know but it feels harsh, you have been there for six months and then … just leave .”

Those who still were in temporary employment when approaching 25 years and had family responsibilities perceived the future as very uncertain. Although the temporary jobs gave a salary for the moment and contacts with future employers, they worried about their financial situation in the future. They had to move between workplaces and repeatedly adopt to new work teams, which contributed to the feelings of insecurity. To accept some of the jobs offered, they had to move away from family and friends.

“ You get a chance to get a job in a company, but you never know how long you’re allowed to be there and what next month will be like. This makes me anxious, which is not good. ”

Health problems in relation to jobs also included workplace injuries and illnesses due to physically heavy work tasks and working in other unhealthy environments. By being eager to take on all kinds of jobs the participants accepted unhealthy and dangerous work situations or set security aside. For example, a young man who took on all jobs he was offered was hit by an overhead crane during work at a steel company. This damaged his shoulder and caused him persistent pain which in turn made it harder for him to find another job in the future. Similarly, a woman avoided unemployment by engaging in shoeing horses. She was kicked in the shoulder by a horse and became partly impaired for a long period of time. Another example was a young man with asthma from childhood, who experienced a worsening of his symptoms when he worked in a very dusty environment sorting newspapers for recycling.

This qualitative study showed that the health experiences among young people in NEET can be viewed as a contextual process, related to the different phases of leaving school, entering the labour market, becoming unemployed and becoming employed. Perceived relief and hope were related to leaving compulsory school, while entering the labour market was related to setbacks and disappointments as well as both health-deteriorating and health-promoting experiences depending on the actual labour market position. Our overarching theme of “Living in the shadow of unemployment – an unhealthy life situation” implies that it is not only the actual situation as unemployed that is problematic but that the other phases are also coloured by earlier experiences of unemployment. The results should be interpreted in the light of the Nordic welfare system, with extensive active labour market policies during the period when the cohort members were young. These policies contributed to keeping the levels of unemployment on a quite low level but still the labour market measures were not enough to prevent everyone from unemployment during certain periods. In the case of this study, the youth unemployment rate of the county was about 13% as compared to 4% in Stockholm [ 16 pp 6 ].

In our inductive analysis, we identified various health experiences among young people in NEET. Periods of unemployment were related to stress related symptoms (such as stomach and headache) as well as to mental health symptoms, such as restlessness, aggressiveness, anxiety, dysphoria, depressiveness and sleeping problems and deteriorating health habits. The participants described a vicious circle, with symptoms adding to each other and to intense drinking. An interesting gendered finding was that while both boys and girls described intensified drinking related to unemployment only girls described that when becoming a parent their caring responsibilities for the child made it impossible for them to be out drinking. These findings provide a deeper understanding of our earlier publications of quantitative analyses of alcohol consumption among unemployed youths, were we found that unemployment generally increased the risk of drinking, but not among young women who had children [ 29 ].

In this inductive approach, we also identified other experiences which we interpret as possible pathways or mechanisms between the health experiences and the labour market experiences. These mechanisms could partly be related to the models mentioned in the Introduction, mainly the economic deprivation model (no money, being dependent), the model of latent functions (passive lifestyle, deteriorated self-confidence) and the stress model (stress, stress-related health symptoms). Other mechanisms were not related to these models such as being dependent, experiencing distrust, feeling disappointed, resignation, gendered caring responsibilities and deteriorated health behaviour (intense drinking, bad eating habits). In this regard our findings are in accordance with one of the few qualitative studies in the field [ 30 ]. The “traditional” models for explaining health effects of unemployment do not fully account for people’s own interpretation and experiences. Thus, our study contributes new understandings about why unemployment is related to ill health among young people.

In earlier research, we have identified a “scarring” mechanism of early unemployment [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. In this context, scarring means that, while youth unemployment has well-known direct effects on health (“wounds”), the wounds remain as scars in adult age (measured in relation to blood pressure and various measures of mental health). Could the mechanisms identified in this study explain scarring? May feelings related to unemployment in young age – such as disappointment, dependence, distrust and resignation – become embedded in the mind and in the patterns of reactions so that those who have been early unemployed respond to stressful life-events later in life with similar reactions and feelings, instead of with an active engagement against injustice and disappointments in life? Feelings of disappointment, dependence, distrust and resignation are closely embedded in depressive states and may be a key to our understanding of unemployment scarring.

We also identified mechanism for improved health during periods of employment. One of these mechanisms was related to the model of latent functions (structuring the day), while several were partly related to the model (being needed, being trusted and given responsibility and feelings of pride). Improved health behaviour was another positive mechanism during employment.

The participants experienced pride and worthiness related to getting employment. Pride could be viewed as a dimension of inner strength, well-being and thus as a positive aspect of health [ 31 ]. In addition, in order to manage the job they had to restrict their late nights out drinking.

However, the employment phase during a context of living in the shadow of unemployment was also hazardous to health. The participants, who all experienced a shorter or longer period of NEET, entered the labour market from a marginalised position. Thus, the kinds of jobs and employment they received were on the margin of the labour market where contracts are insecure and short-term. The participants described stress, injuries and adverse working conditions, which are well-known adverse health consequences of precarious employment [ 18 ]. Earlier quantitative research has demonstrated the significance of high levels of unemployment in society not only for the unemployed [ 22 ] but also for young people in work as well as in studies [ 32 ]. Thus, the positive effects on health of finding employment are threatened by macroeconomic influences such as recession. Then, the work environment is deteriorated due to increased stress in several sectors in society, such as health care, social services etc. The work-related demands increase on these women-dominated workplaces due to deteriorated health in the population and increased need for social security benefits for unemployed, while at the same time there is a reduction in the number of employees, resulting in increasing job strain among those who still are employed [ 32 ]. In addition, other macroeconomic influences such as the increasingly flexible labour market may hamper the positive experiences of getting employed, as insecure employment contracts are becoming increasingly common, especially among young people. There is increasing evidence of the negative health impact of temporary employment [ 33 ].

Our findings emphasise the need to analyse the labour market situation of young people as a contextualised continuum, rather than as a dichotomy, from leaving school to entering the labour market. Even when young people have entered the labour market, they move between the phases of unemployment and training or employment due to the lack of available jobs in society. The importance of bringing a life-course perspective into the research is in accordance with research by Dooley and Prause [ 34 ] who (focusing mainly on adults) have highlighted the need to conceive employment status as a continuum, from adequate employment to inadequate employment and to unemployment. Another well-known theoretician within the field of unemployment and health, Douglas Ezzy [ 35 ], also proposed a middle-range theory of status passage in order to deal with the inadequate temporal aspects of earlier research. He explained changes in mental health among adults during unemployment derived from identity theory. Inspired by a middle-ranged theory developed by Ezzy [ 35 ], Giuntoli et al. [ 30 ] have performed a qualitative study among a group of wide age range who had all lost their jobs. Despite the different sample in their study as compared to ours, the mechanisms they identified were similar (unemployment and welfare stigma) or the same as in our study (financial strain, difficulties in finding a new job, personal identity crises, loss of time structure). Giuntoli et al. [ 30 ] propose a middle-range theory, which suggests that the effects of employment transitions on people’s mental health are linked with people’s experiences of these passages. This is similar to the results from our inductive qualitative analyses.

In one of the few qualitative studies within the field, Simmons et al. [ 36 ] conclude that the broader social structures have a significant impact on becoming and or remaining in NEET. These processes are deeply integrated into a framework of “agency within structures”. In earlier research on the young men who are part of this study we have developed a model of agency within structures in relation to health experiences [ 37 ]. There we interpret our findings as constructions of masculinities within certain structures, in relation to choices, habitus and healthy practices. Agency is surely important in relation to the context of this study, for example from the identified mechanisms of wanting a job, searching for jobs in the first phase of entering the labour market, to resignation due to experiences of unemployment (lack of agency). Like us, Simmons et al. [ 36 ] found that repeated negative labour market experiences had a de-motivating effect on job-searching among the young people. As a result of continued failure to secure employment, the young people became disillusioned. Again, dissolution may help explain the long-term scarring of yearly unemployed as discussed above.

On the methods

The strength of this study is the repeated interviews with young people from 16 to 32 years of age and with the same focus. This gives us unique and rich data together with insight into how the young informants’ experiences of health varied with contextual factors, e.g. job/unemployment and changes in their family situation.

In qualitative content analysis one aspect of trustworthiness is dependability. Dependability concerns the stability of data over time and the researchers’ decisions during the analysis process [ 24 ]. In our study the same researcher (AH) did all the interviews and used the same interview guide. This might raise questions about dependability but could also be seen as a strength because a trustful relation between researcher and interviewees was created and might have made it easier to talk about sensitive matters for example drug use and criminal activities.

In our study, the interviewees were disfavoured young people with early unemployment due to interrupted school attendance, and the context in which data were sampled was the working class in an industry-dominated city in northern Sweden. Therefore, the findings might be related to similar groups in similar contexts. However, regulations for unemployment insurance greatly affect the possibilities for job training, subsidised employments and so on and have to be considered when generalising.

Conclusions

Availability of data and materials.

Data are not freely available. The Swedish Data Protection Act (1998:204) does not permit sensitive data on humans (like in our interviews) to be freely shared. After ethical approval the anonymous data set could be obtained on request to Umeå University after their secrecy examination.

Abbreviations

Anne Hammarström

Christina Ahlgren

Not in education, employment or training

Principle investigator

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants of the study. Open access funding provided by Karolinska Institute

The study was financed by The Swedish Research Council Formas dnr 259–2012-37, The Cutting Edge Medical Research VLL-355661 granted by The County Council of Västerbotten as well as by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare dnr 2011–0445.

The funding bodies had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.

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Authors and affiliations.

Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Anne Hammarström & Christina Ahlgren

Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

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AH is the PI of the Northern Swedish Cohort. She performed all interviews and took initiative to the manuscript. CA made the analyses in close discussion with AH. CA wrote the Result and part of the Method. AH wrote the rest of the manuscript. Both authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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The study was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board in Umeå, Sweden (2012–69-31 M). At that time in Sweden written consent was not needed. Thus, the Board accepted oral consent and did not require written consent. Oral informed consent was received and the participants were informed about the strict confidentiality in relation to the interviews as well as about their rights to withdraw from the study at any time without motivation. Written consent was not requested from the board.

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Hammarström, A., Ahlgren, C. Living in the shadow of unemployment -an unhealthy life situation: a qualitative study of young people from leaving school until early adult life. BMC Public Health 19 , 1661 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-8005-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-8005-5

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205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best unemployment topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on unemployment, 📌 simple & easy unemployment essay titles, 💡 interesting topics to write about unemployment, ✍️ unemployment essay topics for college, ❓ essay questions on unemployment.

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• Unemployment and Lack of Economic Opportunity Having the majority of the population employed is critical for the economic and social stability of a nation. The third reason why employment and economic opportunities must be facilitated together is that it impacts the […]
• Spain and Its Unemployment Problems The low rate of employment is the most renowned characteristic of the Spanish economy as per the close of the Twentieth Century.
• Mergers, Acquisitions, and Downsizing This paper will highlight the differences between mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing and extrapolate the circumstances that can lead a company to adopt any of the three measures. The merging of companies in a horizontal arrangement […]
• The Youth Unemployment Crisis in Spain In order to further identify the root cause of the problem of the high levels of unemployment in Spain, it is necessary to evaluate the evolution of the unemployment among the youth in the country, […]
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• Social Theory & its Relation to Social Problems: Unemployment. Furthermore, classical economists perceive unemployment as a result of excess supply that is influenced due to elevated price level of work labor.
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• Unemployment Rate: Impact on GDP and Inflation In such a way, the scenario shows it is vital to preserve the balance and avoid decisions focusing on only one aspect of the economy.
• Unemployment and Economic Dynamism This type of unemployment is a natural part of the economy and is generally considered to be healthy, as it allows workers to move to new, better-paying jobs.
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• The Unemployment Issue in China The People’s Republic of China is the largest country in terms of population and the third largest country in the world in terms of territory.
• Downsizing for Optimizing Firm Efficiency The adoption of downsizing to mitigate the challenges mentioned above forms the basis of discussion for this paper. The section below highlights some of the benefits accrue to a firm that adopts the policy.
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• The Federal Unemployment Tax Some percent of wages is retained by the employer from the employee’s pay, who then remits the funds to the government on the worker’s behalf.
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• The Unemployment Problem in Panama This paper aims to review two current news articles about Panama, which reveal the issue of the high unemployment rate in this country, which continues to increase and has taken the form of a crisis.
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• Gasoline Prices, Rates of Unemployment, Inflation, and Economic Growth The data which has been queried from the database are related to gasoline prices in California, the unemployment rate in the US, the inflation rate in the US, and Real GDP.
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• Downsizing and Delayering in Organization The best way to do it is to refer to the experience of the firms, which have already faced a similar dilemma.
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• Franklin D. Roosevelt Speech on Unemployment Reaction As, I sat down to listen on the FDR’s speech over the radio, and being one of the unemployed labor in the country, I did hope that a better future was on the way.
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• Unemployment and Social Exclusion In the countries of Europe, the rate of unemployment varies between 3 and 23 percent with the highest numbers in Ireland and Greece and the lowest in Iceland, Norway, Germany, and Malta; the United States […]
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• Econometrics: Poverty, Unemployment, Household Income The goal of this project is to come up with a model that relates to the poverty level in the United States and the unemployment rate and total household income.
• Recommendations for Determining the Dismissal of Jessie In her complaint, Jessie argues that she has been discriminated against because of her impairment and that her supervisor did not give her a reasonable allowance to accommodate her disability.
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• Business Cycle and Unemployment The other phase is the recovery phase which occurs after the recession and is seen by a steady rise on GDP.
• Due Process and Fair Dismissal of Teachers in Texas Specifically, the due process does not explain why a teacher should be dismissed but provides the procedures that should be followed by a school to dismiss a teacher.
• Unemployment Types in Spain and the United States Firms and companies in Spain have no requirement to hire more people and this is because of the state of the economy.
• Unemployment Rates in KNPR’s “State of Nevada” The discussion concentrated on unemployment rates in the State of Nevada and its potential solutions. The unemployment rate in the State of Nevada was 12% for March.
• Unemployment and Its Social Consequences One of the impacts of unemployment that connects the unemployed individual with the social fraternity is the lost self-esteem that an individual suffers.
• Self-Reported Community Health and Unemployment Rate The initiative to increase the number of job offerings instead of spending money on health fairs and educational programs can positively affect the mental well-being of the community.
• Unemployment Values: Types and Impacts The first impact of unemployment on the economy is the extra financial costs that a government may have to incur when unemployed persons are paid some stipends.
• Unemployment and Suicide Rates Correlation in the US The problem of correlation between the levels of unemployment and suicide rates has been previously investigated in the research literature. However, the association between unemployment and suicide rates was discovered in the data collected during […]
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• Unemployment as a Local Economic Issue The evaluation of these aspects is crucial to the current research for the reason that it would help highlight the weak spots of the modern employment apparatus and suggest novel ways of dealing with unemployment.
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• Organizational Downsizing and Survival Syndrome However, in case the rate of mass lay-offs following the downsizing of many firms exceeds the number of newly opened companies, the move to reduce the size of the available workforce is said to produce […]
• Unemployment as National Economic Health Indicator Unemployment is considered a key indicator of national economic health as it directly reflects on the efficiency of government policy and the population purchasing potential. The concept of the natural level of employment in the […]
• Unemployment as a Sorting Criterion The researchers developed a study to evaluate the relationship between the length of unemployment and the stigmatization attitude associated with employers when they handle the affected job applicants.
• Unemployment Insurance Extension in the US In this way, extended UI lets them realize that they are not forgotten by the rest of society, and there is still an opportunity to find an appropriate job.
• Unemployment Insurance Policy in the United States Despite some of the efforts embraced by different communities, the issue of unemployment has continued to affect the welfare of many citizens in the country.
• Employment Status, Dismissals and Exit Interviews Secondly, the status helps to determine the obligations of the employer towards the individual, and the rights of the individual. For example, only employees may present claims of unfair dismissal by an employer and the […]
• Dismissal Meeting: The Art of Delivering Bad News Therefore, sympathy toward the employee and the recognition of the latter’s contribution to the company’s growth, as well as the acknowledgment of their professional expertise, must be viewed as the foundation for the communication.
• Policy: The Aftermath of War – Servicemen Facing Unemployment However, after retiring from their job with disabilities, the most significant issue that faces the transitioning service individuals to reintegrate effectively with the civilian society has been the need to find and cultivate organizational attachments […]
• US Teachers’ Rights, Dismissal, and Discrimination First of all, the principal violates the First Amendment since she deprives the woman of her freedom of expression and the ability to speak freely.
• Unemployment Forms and Causes: Economic Standpoint Unemployment could be defined as the state in the economy where there are many people who are willing and able to work but they do not get a chance to employ their skills to the […]
• Unemployment in Sydney: Spatial Patterns Analysis In contrast, such areas as North West Sydney or Upper North Shore that have the lowest level of unemployment and the highest level of household income.
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• The Level of Unemployment Among Veterans Veterans are some of the most important segments of the USA’s population, bearing in mind that they sacrificed their lives and time to serve the nation in the past.
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• Unemployment Issue in the United States Though a shrinkage in the number of vacancies and the rapid increase in the number of part-time jobs have had their toll on the unemployment rates, the lack of vacancies still remains the key cause […]
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• Unemployment in Saudi Arabia Much effort has been in place to from the government of Saudi Arabia in order to address the question of unemployment despite the fact that the nation is full of vast deposits of crude oil.
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• Unemployment and Inflation Issues In most cases, if one is suffering structural unemployment, it is as a result of improvement in a certain area, or a change in the way things are done.
• Unemployment in the United States It could be assumed that unemployment is a critical issue in the United States of America, as it has a strong impact on the society and other spheres of everyday life.
• Government’s Role in Macroeconomic Stability: The Need for Stronger Fiscal Policies The role of government in influencing the macroeconomic sphere of the economy is one that cannot be understated. One of the foremost negative effects of such fiscal policy is that the influx of government-induced money […]
• US Unemployment: Economic Analysis and Solutions In the first news article titled “The US has a Jobs Crisis: Here’s How to Fix it,” the authors use the latest statistics to demonstrate the problem of unemployment in the US, before relying on […]
• Unemployment Effects on Lithuania Individuals The reduction is attributed to the efforts made by the government to resuscitate the economy through export promotion and improving efficiency in the public sector.
• The Unemployment Situation in the United States This article reviews the current unemployment situation in the United States and the actions that the Obama administration is taking to improve the situation.
• Public Policies for Reducing Unemployment In the recent times, the issue of unemployment has taken a new dimension in the United States. After reflecting on the economic problems facing the United States, it is important to tackle the issue of […]
• Predicting Unemployment Rates to Manage Inventory 81 1949 6.1 0.04 4.74 1.32 1. 15 2000 4.0 1.82 6.
• David Jones Company’s Strategies for Downsizing Furthermore, this report looks at the procedures of downsizing and other viable options in lieu of downsizing or in the event that the strategy fails to produce the expected results.
• Reasons and Solutions for Unemployment in USA Unemployment provides statistical evidence of the economic health and performance of a Government and is defined as a count of the number of people who are not actively engaged in gainful jobs, have failed to […]
• Youth Unemployment in UK and Talent Management Challenges The economic recession that began in 2007 continues to affect a great number of U.K.businesses and one of its effects is the decrease in the number of jobs available to young people.
• Dismissal Meeting The dismissal meeting should be conducted by the immediate boss, who is usually the most conversant with the employee and the reasons for the dismissal.
• Downsizing in the U.S. Military A number of structural policies and strategies guide the military; these provide explanations on the business of the military and the values it upholds.
• Change Management Process: Downsizing and Outsourcing Managing change After defining the problem that needed to be addressed by the change to come, the management decided to appoint a steering committee of three people, including the engineering manager; the choice of the […]
• The Euro Zone’s Rising Inflation and Unemployment Rate However, the euro zone found itself in a predicament from late 2009 after the economic downturns that faced some countries in the euro zone.
• The Implications of Downsizing to the Employees, Communities and Families of the Employees This paper seeks to establish the effects of downsizing to the employees, communities and the families of the employees. Effects of downsizing on the community in general The economic effects of downsizing are not limited […]
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• Concept of Downsizing Strategy in Business The purpose of this research is to provide a clear illustration of the impacts of downsizing on the three levels of an organization.
• Reasons for Increasing Unemployment in U.S The credit crunch that was experienced between from 2007 to 2009 greatly battered the private sector labor market and resulted in a decline in the number of people who are gainfully employed in the US.
• Long-Term Unemployment in the U.S. From the article, Seib identifies a number of issues that contribute to the problem of the long-term unemployed. This has adverse effects on the ability of such children to get employed in future.
• Unemployment in California The unemployment rate increased due to various reasons such as uncertainty arising from the slow growth in the economy, current slide in the stock market and the debt crisis from the European region, which spooked […]
• Unemployment, Labor, and Government Economic Forces The article, “The State of Economics”, is an article that discusses the turmoil between economists of the current age in trying to reconcile economic principles with both the classical and Keynesian economic theories of the […]
• Definition of Unemployment and Its Types The major limitation of the insurance programs policy is that the employees have to make regular contributions of some amount to the program.
• Unemployment in UK To analyze why unemployment is set to rise in the UK To illustrate the true level of unemployment in UK To evaluate how technology affects unemployment in UK To analyze how inflation affects UK unemployment […]
• Concept of Employee Downsizing Consequently, the article tests the hypothesis that employees with health problems before downsizing in an organization are the target of layoffs, while the health of leavers after downsizing is dependent of reemployment.
• Concept of Automation of Services and their Effect on Unemployment Increased wage rate has the effect of increasing the cost of production and since firms are in the business to make profits, they will increase the prices of their products.
• An Employee Layoff Process: Conducting the Dismissal Meeting If they fail to respect the emotions, the management might fail to control the anxiety and the fear of employees in the restructured company.
• Detrimental Effects of Unemployment on People’s Health It is necessary to note that unemployment is regarded as one of the social determinants of health discussed by Wilkinson and Marmot.
• Unemployment in New Jersey There has been a rise in the number of those employed from 143,328 in October 2012 to 143,568 in October 2013.
• Corporate Downsizing Concept and Proper Execution The advancements that have rocked the technological sector are seen to be the greatest influence behind the idea and have to a great extent contributed to the popularity of downsizing.
• Unemployment as a Social Problem To gauge the rate of unemployment the number of the people who are idle is calculated versus the number of people who have been hired.
• The Unemployment Reasons in the UAE In conclusion, the high unemployment rate in the UAE is a result of poor training, the influx of foreign expatriates and government failure to create more jobs for the locals.
• Immigrants in Qatar and the UAE: Laws and Regulations. The Threat of Unemployment vs. the Concern for Social Identity Focusing on the issues of immigration in general and the complexities which the GCC countries have in relation to the issue of immigration in particular, the given paper provides a detailed account of the current […]
• Corporate Downsizing and Restructuring Challenges Concurrently, in the context of restructuring and downsizing business operations, some organisations collaborate with other organisations to attain the desired competitive advantages.
• Labor and Unemployment Rate This ensures that these people make a useful contribution to the economic growth of the country. In addition, lack of stability may also reduce the need to have children.
• Mehdi Hasan: Unemployment Matters More Than GDP or Inflation The writer is of the opinion that job creation is more important for the euro zone populace than solving the problems of inflation and GDP growth.
• Unemployment, Downsizing, and Deindustrialization The effects of both deindustrialization and downsizing that are evidenced due to changing demographics and changing geographic locations of industries depending on the costs to be incurred have very many negative consequences on both the […]
• Youth Unemployment in the UK Such programmes have led to an increase in the level of people who are self-employed. This has led to rise of people who are self-employed in the UK over the years.
• Unemployment in the US: Job Favoritism Spiggs, an official at the “Department of Labor,” insinuated that it could not be easy for the government to determine the extent of the setback.
• Unemployment Rates in the U.S. Chetty has found that 10 % increase in the UI benefits have resulted in the increase of unemployment duration by 4.8%.
• Historical Analysis on Unemployment The city of Los Angeles is one of the places that are worst hit by the catastrophe. The report summarizes that the situation is worse in the US and more particularly in Los Angeles because […]
• Benefits Run Out for Spain’s Jobless: Theories of Unemployment The aim of the paper is to summarize the article on unemployment and establish a connection between the article and the economic theories unemployment.
• Unemployment Rates in the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics The rise in the unemployment rate in 2008 can be termed as cyclical unemployment rate, i.e.the unemployment that occurs due to changes in business cycle.
• National Unemployment & Recession When the recession is severe, there is an increase in the rate of national unemployment and hence a rise in the number of unemployed individuals in the society.
• Employee Benefits, Unemployment Insurance and Workers Compensation Employee benefits are not counted as part of salary or wages earned by the employees and are provided to the employees in exchange for their contribution towards the organization.
• Being Unemployed and the Impact of Unemployment as a Broad Issue In as much as we would like to take the issue of unemployment at an individual level, it is not possible since it touches on the society as whole and hence the need to discuss […]
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IvyPanda. (2024, March 3). 205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/unemployment-essay-topics/

"205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 3 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/unemployment-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 3 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 3, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/unemployment-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 3, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/unemployment-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "205 Unemployment Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 3, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/unemployment-essay-topics/.