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Unemployment and Inflation
• How to measure the unemployment rate?– Labor force and the unemployment
• How to measure the inflation rate?– Real GDP vs. nominal GDP– Real interest rate vs. nominal interest rate
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Unemployment
• The unemployed are those who are willing and able to work but do not have a job and are actively searching for a job.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects monthly survey data to compute the unemployment rate.
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How the BLS Measures Employment Status
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Unemployment
• Labor force participation rate (LFPR)
• Unemployment rate =
Population age-WorkingForceLabor
LFPR
ForceLabor Unemployed
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Problems In Measuring Unemployment
– Treatment of involuntary part-time workers • Some economists have suggested that involuntary part-time
workers should be regarded as partially employed and partially unemployed.
– Treatment of discouraged workers• Individuals who would like to work but, because they feel little
hope of finding a job, have given up searching.
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Types of Unemployment
– Unemployment can arise for a variety of reasons, each with its own policy implications
– Economists have found it useful to classify unemployment into four different categories
– Frictional unemployment– Seasonal unemployment– Structural unemployment– Cyclical unemployment
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Frictional Unemployment
• Short-term joblessness (between jobs or new entrants)• Good match between workers and jobs• With better suited jobs, works would be more productive.
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Seasonal Unemployment
• Joblessness related to changes in weather, tourist patterns, or other seasonal factors.
• So, it is short-term and predictable.• To prevent any misunderstandings, government usually
reports the seasonally-adjusted rate of unemployment.
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Structural Unemployment
• Joblessness arising from mismatches between workers’ skills and employers’ requirements. – Coal miners, autoworkers, etc.
• Generally a stubborn, long-term problem– Often lasting several years or more
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Cyclical Unemployment
• Business cycle – fluctuations in real GDP around its long-run trend.
• When the economy goes into a recession and total output falls, the unemployment rate rises.
• Since it arises from conditions in the overall economy, cyclical unemployment is a problem for macroeconomic policy.
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Full Employment
– A situation where there is no cyclical unemployment
– Natural rate of unemployment• Frictional+Seasonal+Structural• In the U.S., it is between 4.5% and 5%.
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Price Level and Inflation
• Price level– A measure of average prices of goods and services in the
economy
• Index numbers Series of numbers used to track the change of a variable over
time: crime index, air pollution index Most measures of the price level are reported in the form of an
index Dow Jones Index, S&P 500, Consumer Price Index
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Index Numbers
• In general, an index number for any measure is calculated as
100 period base in measure of Valueperiod current in measure of Value x
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Index Numbers
• Create index numbersExample: the number of traffic accidents in Youngstown, Ohio
Year # of traffic accidents index
2000(base year) 325 100
2004 382 5.117100325382
2005 411
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The Consumer Price Index
An index of the cost, through time, of a representative market basket of goods and services purchased by a typical urban family of four.
The market basket does not include goods and services purchased by businesses, government, and foreigners, but include consumer goods and services currently produced in the U.S. as well as used goods and imported goods and services.
An example in the textbook on page 625
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From Price Index to Inflation Rate
• Changes in price index
– Inflation when price level is rising
– Deflation when price level is falling, or negative inflation
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Inflation, Nominal and Real Values
• Purchasing power of money – amount of goods and services
• Nominal values – measured at current year price• Real values – measured at the base year price• Translate nominal values into real values using the
formula
100 x index price
value nominal value real
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Inflation, Nominal and Real Values
• Suppose that from December 2004 to December 2005, your nominal wage rises from $15 to $20 per hour– Are you better off?
• Real wage formula is as follows
100 x yearin that CPI
yearin that wageNominal year any in wageReal
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Inflation, Nominal and Real Values
An example:
Year CPI Nominal Hourly Wage Real Wage
1983 100 8 8100100
8
1995 150 12 810015012
2004 180 15 ?10018015
2005 200 20 ?
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Nominal and Real Interest Rate
• Interest rate – the cost of borrowing money, express as a percentage of the amount borrowed.
• Nominal vs. Real interest rate
-ir
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Redistributive Effect of Inflation
• How does inflation redistribute real income? Inflation hurts those who receive a fixed amount of payment
specified in nominal terms Example: salary specified in a contract
Inflation benefits those who make a fixed amount of payment specified in nominal terms
Examples: mortgage payment, car loan monthly payment
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Expected vs. Unexpected Inflation
• Over any period, percentage change in a real value (%Δ Real) is approximately equal to percentage change in associated nominal value (%Δ Nominal) minus the rate of inflation
%ΔReal = %ΔNominal – Rate of Inflation
• If inflation is fully anticipated, and if both parties take it into account, then inflation will not redistribute purchasing power
• When inflation is not correctly anticipated, however, inflation does shift purchasing power from one group to another.
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Expected vs. Unexpected Inflation
An example: Joe borrows $100 from Mike and promises to pay
back the money plus interest in a year. Mike wants to charge a real return of 3%. Meanwhile, Mike expects the inflation rate to be 3% for the next year and Joe expects it to be 5%. So, Joe happily agrees to pay Mike 6% nominal interest rate. If the actual inflation rate is 4%, how will the purchasing power shift between Joe and Mike?
