Unemployment may be due to several things
and be of several kinds.
-
People who have left or lost one job
don't immediately find another one.
While they look for a new job, they will,
of course, be unemployed, even if only for
a few days..
-
Some industries may decline - perhaps
we don't need their products any longer
or someone else makes them much cheaper
in another country. New industries may take
their place and create new jobs requiring
new skills.. But the workers who worked
in the old industries may need time to retrain
and even then find it difficult to get jobs
in the new ones at once. Often, the new
industries aren't in the same places as
the old ones were - so a lot of people are
thrown out of a job but the new jobs available
are many hundreds or thousands of miles
away.
-
Business in a capitalist free market
system has usually followed a cycle - there
are good times and bad times following one
another regularly - it seems like a natural
law of the market. In the good times employers
feel confident and take on more people,
while in the bad times they can't sell their
products and so they don't need so many
workers and may well sack some of them to
save money. Some industries - building and
construction for example - may be more exposed
to these kinds of swing in the market, and
so may suffer more unemployment at certain
times. Such cycles happened in the twentieth
century in capitalist countries about every
10 years.
-
There may be irrational prejudices around
too - if they don't like your face or your
skin colour or your nationality or your
age or your gender or your religion, they
may not give you a job even though you'd
be capable of doing it well. But that certainly
isn't your fault - it's their loss as much
as yours if they missed out on a good employee
that way.
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