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10-8-05 -- I have nothing to Type So i Leave u with this --.
Unemployment has been noticeable since the nineteenth century. It started to be noticeable in the urban centers of the north east and was growing from the years 1837 to 1857. Eventually it had been common in the northeast and the Midwest of the country by the year 1870, and there was no sign of recovery or improvement.Unemployment rate ranged from 4 to 5 and up to 15 percent in the depth of depressions which only shows the percentage of the labor force Americans, but the fact was that almost 20 to 25 percent of working Americans experienced unemployment and were out of their jobs for a good amount of time some racking up to 5 months out of a year. And during the depressions it was up to 40 percent of working Americans getting laid off the duration of each year. It wasn’t till 1893 that unemployment took off on a rocket, by this time America was entering the Great Depression. 25 percent of American workers were jobless simultaneously. The only time that every one that was able physically to work had jobs during war time which didn’t last long. Unemployment was scattered around United States, it was high in some cities like the New England cities that manufactured shoe and textile and was low in other cities and states around the US.
During the Depression the unemployment problem slowly became a public policy and American workers demanded public works programs and relief from all the unemployment that plagued them. By 1894 a man named Jacob Coxey and his “armies” that were people who were unemployed demanded the federal government to take care of the unemployment problems. Some major political parties thought that the government niter could or should solve the problem.As the twentieth century came the views of these major political parties started to change, the pressure from the working force grew and eventually the precedents of economic regulation and social welfare legislation were established. The problem of unemployment wasn’t solved but it was on a good turnaround in the history of unemployment. There were a lot of public works programs that were created as part of the famous New Deal.
The social Security act of 1935 established the unemployment insurance system to aid the people that were unemployed and help them though the rough time till they can get back up on their feet again. Unemployment rates dropped down to 2-3 percent during the following years of the New Deal, but it started to rise again by the 1970s and was up to 10 percent it wasn’t that high since the great depression. The most damage that happened during the 1970s was in the smokestack industries of the Midwest and the fall of the oil economies that once were thriving in Taxes and Louisiana.
Unemployment still exists today around 5.9 percent of the American workforce are currently unemployed. Workers that lost their jobs have stayed unemployed longer and 24 percent of the workforce has been without a job for more than six months. As the economy was damaged by the September 11, attack it was on a road to recovery but the confidence between consumer and businesses were torn apart because of the accounting scandals that involved Enron, and Martha Stewart. Unemployment was improving by the year 2005 started. Today it is around 4.9 percent overall. In Massachusetts alone it is 4.2 percent in August 2005 which is good, but not as good as having a 2 or a 3 percent average. But the point is that unemployment rates are getting better and the government is helping to keep it managed rather than uncontrolled like the nineteenth century.
Work Cited
John A. Garraty, Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy (1978); Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (1986).
CBS NEWS “Out of Work, Out Of Sight” Dec. 29, 2003
U.S Department of Labor “Bureau of Labor Statistics” Aug 2005
