Cyclical Unemployment In The 1930's

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Quality of life was imbalanced due to many reasons during the 1930s, even with an average real wage increase due to the smaller drop in wages compared to the larger drop in cost of living. Breaking down unemployment paints a picture as to why. Leading up to 1930s societal work practices had changed, leaving hard workers with jobs and more traditionalists that believed less work benefited the whole group but did not take into account of maximized production with no job. Once manufacturing managers flipped the switch, only kept the hard workers. Almost a tenth of the working population was then considered unemployable. The area that took the greatest impact was the northeastern United States due to their many urban manufacturing plants, the elderly, …show more content…
Beginning in 1929 unemployment was at 5.5%, however, in 1931 unemployment went to 16.3%. Breaking down the individuals into sub-groups of unemployables, we would have the cyclical, frictional, and hard core structural. Cyclical unemployment was a macroeconomic factor between 1931 and 1933, averaging 12% due to the economic production down turn. After 1933 a tremendous economic growth occurred and cyclical unemployment kept low. On the other hand, frictional unemployment is a tool used to match the right employer with the right employee. Mostly remaining constant, frictional unemployment actually dropped between 1931 and 1933, due to people not switching jobs and staying in school longer. Hard core structural unemployment can be described as individuals whom were not competitive workers in the new structural work environment. Due to changes in demand for skilled machine workers to execute a best method approach as opposed unskilled and untrainable workers, the hard core structural unemployed increasingly became less employable at any time due to the cost of training and production loss. These hard core structural unemployables averaged an 8.7% unemployment rate between 1931 and 1940 peaking at 10% during 1934, 1935, and