Unemployment and unemployment help has been a hot topic coming back from the pandemic and with recent election results. At one point during the pandemic, unemployment even hit its highest rate since the Great Depression, when it was nearly 25 percent. The peak during COVID-19 was 15 percent in April 2020. Issues commonly associated with unemployment include a struggling economy and with that comes inflation.
Multiple solutions have been proposed to get the unemployment rate to as close to zero as possible, while also minimizing the inflationary effect programs and such could have on the economy. These solutions have been put on the floor of both Congress with Speaker Pelosi and the Senate with majority leader Chuck Schumer to varying degrees and effects.
Obviously, the key to ending unemployment is creating new valuable jobs. However, methods to do so vary. President Biden recently tried to decrease unemployment with his own method of bringing jobs in. Biden did this by signing a massive infrastructure bill into legislation and making sure that the bulk of the bill contained language that forced the infrastructure to be American-made rather than outsourced. The bill cost an estimated 1 billion dollars in a bipartisan effort to fight unemployment. The bill targets America’s blue-collar workers and companies while raising the quality of living. Alongside this, the bill also has numerous throw-in clauses that promoted a cleaner future environment and lessened the effects of emissions on global warming.
The primary issue with this method commonly pointed out by opponents of the bill is the fact that Republicans believed it wasn’t a sustainable answer and Democrats believed that it didn’t do enough for households. The main issue, from an economic standpoint, is the fact that investing a significant amount of money into an industry from the government means that inflation and debt will likely increase. Battling inflation and unemployment at the same time is a tough task and a difficult ask for any country as they are partially a give-and-take relationship.
War is another solution that has worked throughout history, but has bleak effects associated with it. America is one of the top military-industrial-military complexes in the world and would benefit greatly economically from war. War pulled America out of the Great Depression and boosted the economy multiple times during the past including World War 1. This is due to how much pull America has in the weapons industry with spending on the military and companies such as Lockheed Martin and other war profiteers.
The clear issue with this solution are the moral objections to war and the undeniably negative effects it has not only on a population but the environment and the greater world. Wars, rightfully so, are commonly opposed by the public due to those facts. War is also fairly unlikely under the current administration as Biden has already pulled out of the Middle East and taken a relatively pacifist stance when it comes to conflicts such as the Ukraine Russia conflict.
The last and much less helpful, but unproblematic solution is to just wait it out. It is more likely that our economy will eventually even itself out rather than collapse. This is because waiting would lower inflation and eventually more jobs would be made available as the American dollar returned to value. However, waiting is never the best answer as indecision almost always proves to be the wrong decision throughout our history.
Additionally, unemployment help programs are a major part in resolving the “Unemployment Crisis” and making it much less of a crisis for those affected. As becoming unemployed has several economic effects obviously, but also mental effects with many becoming depressed and unmotivated after being laid-off.
One such unemployment program during the pandemic was titled “CARES act” which stood for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security act. It provided money to those who were struck and struggling from unemployment due to unexpected outside forces such as the Coronavirus. This was needed because as mentioned earlier unemployment was at an all time high since the Great Depression after the pandemic started which was expected with so many businesses and jobs closing to prevent more deaths and tragedy.
Another economic aid act passed to assuage the inflation and unemployment issues was “The American Rescue Plan” which consisted of over 350 billion dollars being given to eligible state, national, and local companies and stores. Notable companies who were buoyed up upon this plan include Tesla, Apple, and Walmart. Although all of the aforementioned companies may not have needed the additional aid they certainly took it.
The main benefactors of the American Rescue Plan were truly mom and pop shops which were able to stay afloat solely because of the plan. There have been some detractors of the plan; however, as it was a lot of government interference in the economy that of course cost money.
All of these programs have provided an interesting and somewhat ironic insight into the way the country functions. With Republicans commonly complaining about the programs and turning around and benefiting from them nonetheless. Notably, Monica Del Cruz, a Texas politician, complained and disparaged President Biden’s handling of the aid situation despite taking thousands of dollars for her personal businesses during the pandemic.
It is clear that the current direction President Biden is heading in handling unemployment after the coronavirus pandemic is a positive one with new lows in unemployment coming out every month since the pandemic. Despite many detractors of Biden bringing up unemployment and the economy it is clear that he is doing an upstanding job at handling the situation he was put in. Most likely even handling better than his predecessor would’ve.
Additionally, it will be truly interesting to see the way the government handles the weighty scales of economic intervention and programs vs inflation. If either side of the scale gets too heavy it is almost certain to cause major problems both at home and abroad. Especially, since the United States Dollar is no longer backed by gold and hasn’t been since 1971.