Jobs and Unemployment

Jobs and Unemployment
 
INTRODUCTION
We have chosen the unemployment and jobs as the subject of our project because we realised that nowadays, work is one of the most important things for living. People who have a good and satisfying job are happier in their life. If they work hard, they earn a lot of money. They are independent because they can buy whatever they want. It gives a little bit more sense to their life. Unfortunately, the situation is not very good and not everyone is having a job at the moment because of economic crises. We want to give you some information about unemployment during the economic crises and to let you know how important a good job is for us.

Unemployment is a big problem of our society which affects millions of people all over the world. People who are unemployed are in a very stressful situation. It is not easy to find a new one especially if it is related to older person. The companies do not want to hire elderly people. The unemployment affects not only them but also their family and it has an impact on all of us.
We started our work finding the information about jobs and unemployment and also gathering information about current situation in our country. We would like to inform you about the jobs and unemployment in general. We would like to tell you about how to make a decision and chose a good job. We would like to tell you something from the history of unemployment; we will mention the types of unemployment and the impact on our country. In the end we will try to create how to eliminate the unemployment in our country. We have visited the Labor office in Banska Bystrica and we were given some useful information.

THEORETICAL BASIS

- Jobs
Work is one of the most important things for living. A satisfying job makes us useful, needed and people can find a personal fulfillment. In the world there are a lot of jobs which we can choose and be good at.

1.1 Making a decision
We usually make a decision about our future career several times in our life. When we are children girls used to dream about a career of a model, a singer or an actress and boys wanted to be a fireman or a soldier. Getting older young people are more and more experienced and so they are motivated and encouraged by their parents or teachers. Money is also becoming very important fact which influences us. We dream about the job which is well- paid and is needed in our society.

1.2 Nowadays situation
Nowadays the best paid jobs do not involve too much manual work. Managers, IT professionals, successful lawyers, politicians, economists- these are the people with the highest income. Of course in certain professions you will not be well paid even if you need a university degree to work there. So being smart and study do not automatically guarantee you a high salary. Paradoxically teachers, social workers, officers, manual workers are not paid enough for their work . The worst paid jobs are for example: miners, builders or heavy industry workers. Undoubtedly, we should consider which job is the best for us. We have to consider our abilities, our talent and we also have to think of  the amount of money we can  earn.

2. Unemployment
Everyone looks for a job after finishing the school. Nowadays it is not easy because today’s world is strongly affected by the financial crisis. There are a lot of students who finish the university and are unemployed.
Unemployment is the condition of not having a job. Unemployment occurs when a person is available to work and is seeking work but currently is without work. In this situation it is difficult to meet financial obligations such as purchasing food and paying bills. The unemployed are sometimes not able to pay rent and they become homeless. While being unemployed, people often face financial difficulties. To be unemployed is very stressful situation and people have to face the health problems.

2.1 The History of Unemployment
Preliterate communities treat their members as parts of an extended family and thus do not allow unemployment. In precapitalist societies such as European feudalism, there were servants never "unemployed" because they had direct access to the land, and the needed tools, and could thus work to produce crops. Just as on the American frontier during the nineteenth century, there were  farmers on poor land. The decade of the 1930s saw the Great Depression in the United States and many other countries. In 1929, the U.S. unemployment rate averaged 3%. In 1933, 25% of all American workers and 37% of all nonfarm workers were unemployed. Unemployment in Canada reached 27% in 1933. In some towns and cities in the north east of England, unemployment reached as high as 70%. In Germany the unemployment rate reached nearly 25% in 1932
 
2.2 Types of Unemployment
There are several types of unemployment: frictional, seasonal, classical, structural, cyclical.

Frictional Unemployment
Frictional unemployment occurs when a worker moves from one job to another. While he searches for a job he is experiencing frictional unemployment. This applies for fresh graduates looking for employment as well. This is a productive part of the economy, increasing both the worker's long term welfare and economic efficiency. It is a result of imperfect information in the labor market, because if job seekers knew that they would be employed for a particular job vacancy, almost no time would be lost in getting a new job, eliminating this form of unemployment.

Seasonal Unemployment
Seasonal unemployment occurs when an occupation is not in demand at certain seasons. Seasonal unemployment results from the fluctuations in demands for labor in certain industries because of the seasonal nature of production. In such industries there is a seasonal pattern in the demand for labor. During the period when the industry is at its peak there is a high degree of seasonal employment, but during the off-peak period there is a high seasonal unemployment.

Classical unemployment
Classical or real-wage unemployment occurs when real wages for a job are set above the market-clearing level. This is often ascribed to government intervention, as with the minimum wage, or labour unions. Some, such as Murray Rothbard, suggest that even social taboos can prevent wages from falling to the market clearing level.

Structural unemployment
Structural unemployment is caused by a mismatch between jobs offered by employers and potential workers. This may pertain to geographical location, skills, and many other factors. If such a mismatch exists, frictional unemployment is likely to be more significant as well.

Cyclical or Keynesian unemployment
Cyclical or Keynesian unemployment, also known as demand deficient unemployment, occurs when there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy. This is caused by a business cycle recession, and wages not falling to meet the equilibrium rate.

2.3 Impact of Unemployment
Unemployed people are all days at home and they try to create the ideas of making money. Rising unemployment increases the crime rate, the suicide rate, and causes a decline in healthiness.  Another cost for the unemployed is that the people who have no work in their country leave their homes and go to the foreign countries and bigger cities to look for a job there. This way our country loses good and qualificated workers and it has a big impact on our country and society.

Comparing the advantages and disadvantages of unemployment, some say that slow economic growth and the resulting unemployment, if not unreservedly good, at least includes important economic benefits which must be carefully balanced against the obvious advantages of full employment. If the unemployed is clever enough, he should not think about his situation as his last and definitive position, he should think about it as a time to get further education, to improve his skills and finally to raise his chances in getting a proper job. In this way, uneployment is an interesting and effective way how to improve skills and qualifications of not just unemployed.

STUDY RESULTS
3. Unemployment in Slovakia
We have tried to look at uneployment in Slovakia. We have visited The Labor office and we were given sufficient number of graphs and information about uneployment in Slovakia. We have looked up some important information about unemployment in Slovakia and Banska Bystrica via internet. We have found interesting graphs and current information about the situation of unemployment.

3.1 The Currently Situation of Unemployment
We were given the information that the unemployment rate in Slovakia reached 9.03 percent in January, the Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Office (ÚPSVAR) told the TASR newswire on February 20. This represents a month-on-month increase of 0.59 percentage points and a year-on-year rise of 3.54 percentage points. The number of officially-registered job seekers reached 269,465 in January. The highest unemployment rate was recorded in the Rimavská Sobota district in the Banská Bystrica Region at 29.11 percent, while the lowest was registered in the 1st district of Bratislava at 1.53 percent. The unemployment in Slovakia continues to rise. In April 2009, the national unemployment rate increased to 10.92 percent, its highest level in last three years.

„Between October 2008 and mid-February, 156 mass layoffs were announced to job centres, and 12,154 jobs are currently in danger,” said ÚPSVAR director Jan Sihelský at a press conference on February 20. Dividing the uneployed into groups with the same last working area, we see that the highest number of the uneployed is in industry, followed by warehouse together with small business and the third group is agriculture.

The number of officially-registered job seekers in Slovakia reached 289,340 in April, rising by 15,561 the  month on month, and by 96,822 the year on year. According to Sihelsky, Slovakia currently has the seventh-highest unemployment rate in the European Union. The highest rate of the unemployment was last month in the Banská Bystrica Region. It was 16, 91% and this represents a month-on- month increase of 0, 80 percentage points.

SOLUTIONS
- The Elumination of the Unemployment
We were thinking about the questions how to eliminate the unemployment. We think that there always will be uneployment, so it is not possible to eliminate uneployment totally but we should try to decrease its growth to minimum. Also prevention is the most effective way how to eliminate uneployment.
 
3.1 Job Agencies
Job agencies are institutions which help unemployed people in many different ways. There are plenty of them in our country. All you have to do is to provide them with your personal information and then you have to wait until they find a job for you. You have to write the curriculum vitae- CV so that employers could see what skills and talents you have.

3.2 The interview
If the agency found a suitable job for you then you would have to turn up at the interview. You should put on formal clothes and you should find out some information about the company. Try to speak up and sit up straight and maintain eye contact.

CONCLUSION
Unemployment is undoubtedly one of the biggest problems of modern society. On one hand, it complicates lives of the millions but on the other hand it is the driving force of the most developed world economies. Although it may never be eliminated completely, we have to try to succeed in this fight because it is the effort that keeps the mankind alive. During our work on this project, we found out that the unemployment situation in our country has become much better since the beginning of the 90's and that there is still a downward trend. In order not to keep unemployment in Slovakia decreasing, we suggested the two possible solutions: either retraining of those who are not able to find work in the field of their skills which could be partially funded by the governmental development programs or improving work mobility legislature so that people could move wherever their skills are needed without any obstacles. These measures, if adopted by the government and people themselves, could considerably improve the conditions in which the work cycle of an individual runs. We try to believe, that this project was not a waste of time.