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+--- Thread: What would happen if every unemployed person in the nation all at once stopped looking for work for one month? (/thread-51116.html)
What would happen if every unemployed person in the nation all at once stopped looking for work for one month? - Happy Camper - 12-14-2012 07:26 PM
The forces of supply and demand are fundamental and effective. Competing with each other for jobs levels the field for employers on wages and job availability. The market volatility of stopping and starting all at once might bring a new perspective to process, and the social and political implications of a mass boycott would also be informative.
But what course would such an activity actually take and what lasting effects would be initiated by it?
- KJ - 12-14-2012 07:34 PM
They would be like you. Useless! I can find a new job in less than a day why are there so many unemployed people, this should be its own question.
- rwalke01 - 12-14-2012 07:34 PM
I think every Person in America should stop working for one month or until our government stops raising our taxes. Its hard to beleive the Boston tea party ever happened looking at the way we are taxed today. Everyone except the rich would pay for it until the economy got back on track, thats what would happen.
- crimsonedge - 12-14-2012 07:34 PM
Well if they stopped looking for work for a month they wouldn't be counted as unemployed since they are not looking for work according to the DoL.
It wouldn't do much because the people who are unemployed are unemployed for a reason. They could have quit their old job and decide to look for a better one or their a student joining the workforce ( Frictional unemployment). Sometime people lose their jobs because the market has became to technical or don't need their skills. (Structural Unemployment)
Of course unemployment is worse when the economy is down and business are not hiring (Cyclical Unemployment) but what would happen when there is no unemployed people and the economy booms. There is no people to fill those positions and the economy grows; pure inflation.
So right now the economy in the US is at Full employment (Full employment = unemployment 5%) and things are fine.
- Ricky Bobby - 12-14-2012 07:34 PM
if every unemployed person in the nation stopped looking for work for a month, as already has been noted, they would cease to be counted as unemployed. I guess then, for a while, there would be 100% employment (though in the normal turbulence of the job market this will be only a brief phenomenon before some of the previously employed became the new unemployed - unless of course you mean that for a month period even the newly unemployed don't look for jobs either).
In terms of the supply and demand perspective you mentioned, with 100% employment the economy would start overheating. Competition for labour would mean that wage pressures would increase, which would increase inflationary pressures as well. Increased inflationary pressures would in turn create more wage pressures as employees find their wages can't buy as much as it used to.
In the meanwhile, all the unemployed people who are staging their boycott will be getting poorer and poorer in a society where the prices are rapidly rising. The classic insider/outsider scenario. All the gainfully employed will therefore be very happy if the unemployed were to pursue this route.