Talk:Causes of unemployment in the United States

Untitled

This page does not seem to address the scope of immigration in the US labor market. This chart infers 3M or so immigrants enter the US labor market annually, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Chart_of_foreign_born_in_the_US_labor_force_1900_to_2007.png while the US work visas alone reflect a much higher number, 70 million, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-frankel/insourcing-american-lose-_b_11173074.html

There are only 320 million people total in the U.S., so 70 million immigrants per year is a crazy number. Here is the source for the foreign-born in the work force, available if you click on the diagram as well.Farcaster (talk) 01:02, 13 April 2017 (UTC) https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.nr0.htm

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 30 June 2019 and 3 August 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ogrubbs.

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Sections with information that is irrelevant to the article/section

The "Trade Deficit" section does not relate to the article at all, and the only mention of unemployment is in relation to rising imports, which is not the same thing as a trade deficit. This section can either be deleted or moved to a more relevant page, and possibly be linked as "see more: Trade Deficit" if applicable.

The unusually high trade deficit (6% GDP) in the mid-2000s was a primary driver of the housing bubble (e.g., China savings financed some of the housing bubble), which added millions of construction jobs, prior to the bubble bursting. It was a major destabilizing factor in the economy and therefore to employment. Under normal conditions, the effect is tougher to determine. We have studies that indicate trade with China cost the U.S. a couple of million manufacturing jobs [See Krugman "Trade and Jobs" July 2016]. However, these losses can be offset in other industries, as people saving money on cheaper China goods can spend that money elsewhere. A trade definition mathematically is a reduction to GDP, meaning if we had a zero trade deficit our GDP and presumably employment would be higher. If you assume we have about a $20 trillion GDP and 148 million private sector workers, a $550 billion trade deficit works out to about 4 million workers (i.e., each worker is about $135,000 GDP). However, it's unclear if the "other things equal" condition can be met; actions we take to eliminate a trade deficit in particular industries would have collateral impacts in other industries.Farcaster (talk) 00:52, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

"Immigration": The section on "Effects on Wages and Inequality" can be deleted as it has no relevance to unemployment or its causes.

I think it gives helpful context to the discussion. Immigrants have little impact on wages or inequality; I'd like to take those off the table, so people are aware of what is NOT causing unemployment. Higher wages (more money to spend) means more jobs and better income inequality means more spending by those with lower incomes, also creating jobs. Perhaps that linkage should be specified.Farcaster (talk) 00:58, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

The section "Industry-Specific Factors" is titled as so, but only covers the manufacturing industry (construction is mentioned as well) and even displays "see more: manufacturing...". At the end there is a line about how many law students end up practicing law, but it stands on its own and is not relevant to anything else in the section and should be deleted. — Eklui (talk) 02:49, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree, the law stuff can be dropped. Illustrating trends in particular industries is the purpose of the section; perhaps subsections by industry?Farcaster (talk) 00:58, 18 March 2018 (UTC)