The Impact of Unemployment

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Kirby (2000:307) states that unemployment is also harmful for individual’s physical health to some extent. the Centers for Disease Control in the UK and the National Health Service in the UK has announced that unemployment is a factor of health risk. Addressing the psychological and lifestyle effects of unemployment could importantly influence health for long time of these people. People are suggest to change their lifestyle in order to adapt unemployment. Stephens (1998:205) states that unemployment will influence individuals psychologically. The person who lost job will be strongly shocked, and then lost their self-worth and feel it is wasting of their potential. Unemployed people may worry about their current situation may mean that they will not be able to find another job, so their mental many have some psychological changes. It affects a person psychologically which can have many short term and long term problems. For example, some research shows that the male from middle class have higher risk of committing suicide, the reason is those group of people used to enjoy relatively high social status, so the extreme feeling such as desperation will suddenly come in to the mind. Unemployment can strongly knock down a person (Edgell, 2012:180).

However, unemployment brings some benefits to some extent. if there is full employment, it tends to mean it is enough supply of labour force, so it means employer will need to pay much more to the people who come for the job recruitment which is bad news for firms, too high for many potential businesses to be worth going into business. This may seem counterintuitive, how can it be anything but good if everyone is working!? Here's an example that will make it clear. Assuming that four third of the workers in a country suddenly decided to skip town and move to another country. Salaries will suddenly rise very high for the rest quarter of the employees, for the businesses would suddenly have increased demand for those people. However, no matter how salaries go up, most businesses will directly not get any worker, due to there are not enough to go around. So though all would be employed, and the salaries really high, this will be temporary, because most of the businesses would soon die, and demand for the employees would fall, and at the end of the salaries would be more normal again, yet the economy would have been nearly decimated.

In summary, unemployment is a serious problem for an individual and a state. To a country, unemployment will breed social instability and cause the extra spending on welfare, thereby the rising of the tax. So it bring down the standard of living and the growth of the economy. Secondly, unemployment brings lots of healthy problems represent on both physical and psychological This essay has also provided statistics and examples supporting unemployment impact state and individual. It is important to relieve this big social issue.

Reference list

Edgell, S. (2006) The Sociology of Work - Continuity and Change in Paid and Unpaid Work. London: Sage.

Fulcher, J. and Scott, J. (2007) Sociology (3rd edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Haralambos, M. and Holborn, M. (2004) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (6th edition). London: Collins Educational.

Kirby, M. (2000). Sociology in perspective. 1st Edition. Oxford: Heinemann Education publishers.

Moore, S. (1987). Sociology. 1st Edition. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes Ltd.

O’Donnell. (2002). Mastering Sociology. (4th Edition). New York: PALGRAVE.

Stephens, P. (1998). Think Sociology. (1st Edition). Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes Ltd.