3.3.6 Unemployment
Work satisfies many needs of the individual and the community. For the individual, work satisfies the need to exercise his faculties and to participate in the collective work of society. In addition, work also gives the individual a claim upon social products, enabling him to support himself and his family. In case of the community, work is necessary for survival and progress of civilisation. In traditional societies, in which the productivity of agricultural labour is very low, virtually the entire population must be employed in farming. When productivity reaches a certain level, the demand for primary goods (i.e., agricultural products) drops in relation to the demand for other goods like clothing, shelter and manufactured products. The production of these secondary goods ultimately becomes organized in factories and expands dramatically. As the demand for manufactured goods grows and remains high, employment in the secondary sector also remains high. In addition, there is also a tertiary sector of employment comprising of services like teaching, administration, medical care, tourism and other similar pursuits that are not carried out in factories. In countries with high standard of living, the demand for products of the tertiary sector keeps increasing. As a result, employment in this sector increases more rapidly than in the primary or secondary sector. The great shrinkage of employment in the primary sector is one of the most important phenomena of modern history. Men who abandon the soil have to change not only their means of livelihood but their residence and way of life. For a long time, the migration from a peasant culture involving millions of people went mainly towards the factories. Although the output of the factories continued to increase, the same was not the case with factory employment. In the US, employment in the secondary sector peaked at about one-third of the labour force from 1920 to 1970 and since then, the expansion has been in the tertiary sector. Technological progress would have led to unemployment (or much reduced working hours), had it not been for the expansion of the tertiary sector. The same is more or less true in case of other developed countries. The consumption of primary or agricultural goods eventually reaches a point of saturation. The consumption of manufactured goods passes through a phase of increase and then another phase of relative decline. It is the tertiary sector, however, that absorbs most of the manpower freed by technological progress in the other two sectors. The result is that employment as a whole does not decline over the long run because of technological progress. In the wealthy and technologically advanced countries, neither the size of the work force nor the number of working hours per week has shown any tendency to decline in the last fifty years. Of course, there have been economic crises (like depression and recession/ the state of being set back ) giving rise to unemployment; but the unemployment created in this way was eventually absorbed. A dynamic economy requires that the labour force be mobile enough to move out of the sectors in which technological advances have reduced the need for manpower and into the sectors in which labour is in short supply. Such a migration, however, is inevitably accompanied by some degrees of unemployment or underemployment. During the Great Depression of the 1903s, the rate of unemployment in the western capitalist countries reached very high levels. In the US, the rate of unemployment reached 25% of the labour force in 1933. In Sweden, unemployment reached 25% twice (in 1921 and 1931). Even in Great Britain, unemployment was above 15% during the period of Great Depression. Since the Second World War, unemployment rates in developed countries have remained far below such catastrophic levels, but they are quite high in most of the developing nations. Even when the overall rate of unemployment is low, it remains a serious social problem. While some workers may be temporarily out of work (or passing from one job to another), others may remain unemployed for a long time. The US Bureau of Labour Statistics has studied the incidence of unemployment quite thoroughly. The figures of this Bureau show that women have more unemployment than men, young people more than adults and persons without education or special skills more than educated persons do.
Since the Second World War, the governments of many countries (especially the developing ones) have become committed to a programme of reducing unemployment and underemployment. The constitution of France explicitly charges the state with assuring full employment to its citizens. Similar goals have been set up with varying degrees in many other countries. Even, the Charter of the United Nations makes employment a major objective for its members. Different governments have followed various policies in the pursuit of full employment. One general approach towards this end is to improve the supply of manpower; another is to alleviate / to make light; the adverse effects of unemployment and underemployment. A third approach to full employment seeks to maintain the economic activities at a high level through fiscal policies. Finally, there is the method of economic planning where the government's Planning Commission sets targets for various sectors of the economy that are linked to forecasts of available manpower. This approach is based on the belief that the complex problems of unemployment and underemployment cannot be separated from other problems of economic and social developments. Moreover, all the developed countries and many developing ones as well try to soften the impact of unemployment through some forms of unemployment compensation. In some cases, governments seek to induce employers to retrain workers for new jobs rather than laying them off. The problem of unemployment is often a regional matter. When this is the case, attempts are made by governments to mitigate it through regional development programmes. The efforts to deal with the instability of employment caused by technological and economic progress involve providing information on the state of the labour market and on the qualifications of those seeking work. This is done by government or private employment agencies in the hope of directing job seekers more efficiently to existing jobs or helping them to prepare for occupation in which manpower is likely to be needed. Most countries now have such agencies, designed to bring together the two sides of the labour market. Information provided by such employment agencies leads to guidance, and guidance leads to education, training and retraining. Many governments endeavour/ to attempt to provide or subsidise training programmes for those whom couldn't benefit from them. The use of monetary and fiscal/ pertaining to the public treasury or revenue policies to keep the economy functioning at a high level of employment has been undertaken in many countries since the Great Depression/ a lowering. In periods of recession or of growing unemployment, the government may increase the aggregate demand by expanding the money supply or by increasing its own spending. This approach was quite successful in the US during the 1960s, when a major reduction in the income tax, incentives for business investments, and a large increase in federal spending for both war and non-war purposes brought the unemployment rate down to 3.5% (in 1969). In the years that followed, the US was faced with the problem of serious inflation/ undue increase in quantity of money in proportion to buying power . In order to solve the problem of inflation, efforts were made to stabilise prices; but these efforts directly led to rising unemployment. In contrast, the French government undertook national planning on a broad scale in the 1950s and 1960s and succeeded in it. The resulting high death rate among small children in such families (poor) often reinforces the tendency to have more children and, the vicious cycle continues. Money is a crucial factor in health care. Also suitable mental hospitals, child guidance and marriage guidance clinics and schemes for the care of alcoholics and ding/ Doctor of Engineering addicts are essential. There should be significant developments in the treatment of maladjusted members of society. The fragmentation/ division into fragments of earlier health service organisations (such as single-disease-oriented programmes and the separation of curative and preventive services) is now giving way to more comprehensive organisations. Health promotion, disease prevention, curving of the ill and rehabilitation are brought together into one network of integrated services that reach the community level. Decisions of great complexity are involved in allocating limited resources to provide health services to a large number of people. In order to achieve optimum results, there should be an increasing emphasis on the health planning process and on the design of more effective public health service systems. An important aspect of national health planning should be close co-ordination between planning, budgeting, implementing and evaluating of health-care programmes. No public health service can be fully effective unless the concerned government will take care to this aspect.
Next |
