Is any one group particularly vulnerable to unemployment or underemployment?
It’s pretty clear that youth unemployment is a big problem. Think of it as a seniority issue: Young people are usually the last to enter the workforce and the first to be booted out. Ethnic minorities also experience higher levels of unemployment, partly due to low levels of education and living in communities with fewer job opportunities. Q: If unemployment causes such strong mental and physical health effects, why isn’t it tackled with the same force as other public health issues – swine flu, for example? A: I think a main reason is that unemployment is not altogether bad from a market perspective. It’s seen as a natural way to reorganize jobs to be more economically efficient. In the short run, however, there are people who will lose their homes, fall into depression or abuse drugs. So there is certainly an inhumane quality to the argument for economic efficiency. But even if we wanted to eliminate unemployment – say, by having the government serve as the employer of last resort – I
