Essay on Unemployment

Worst Social Nightmare When I was little, I often had nightmares about monsters. I used to wake up at night and call my dad who was supposed to frighten them away. Once I asked him if he had ever had bad dreams, my father answered that he often had a nightmare about losing his job. I was puzzled: what was his job compared to my monsters? Only many years later I realized what he meant. Unemployment has always been an important social problem. However, in the last decades it has gained even larger significance. The reasons for that are both demographic and economic. On the one hand, we are a society of an extensive type, which means that the mortality rate is higher than the birth rate and our nation is actually aging. As a result, each year there are more retired people and fewer middle-aged ones who mainly pay taxes and ensure the state budget can guarantee all the social payments. On the other hand, the world economic crisis has affected the stability of our currency and the industries, which traditionally employed a lot of workers. For instance, our famous car manufacturing giants Ford and Chrysler made more than one hundred thousand workers redundant. At the same time, developing countries with their cheap labor force help large companies outsource their production and cut costs. So, the situation becomes a vicious circle: people lose their jobs because of the crisis and stop paying taxes, at the same time the unemployment benefits allow them neither the opportunity for decent existence, nor the possibility to find a well-paid job. They choose to do whatever they can earn money with. But having a low salary means they pay less taxes and this generally decreases the level of the society development.