Discouraged Worker
A discouraged worker can be defined as someone who is of the legal age to work and has a desire to work, however, will not seek active employment due to their belief that there are no jobs available. In my opinion, I believe that this description is mostly aligned with the structural unemployment description. Structural unemployment is basically when a worker has a specific skill set that does not match the available jobs being offered. A discouraged worker does have a specific skill set, but due to their discouragement in the employment workforce, they do not believe there are any jobs available that are seeking their specific attributes.
Considering a period of economic expansion, I would have to align the discouraged workers with the frictional unemployment definition. Firstly, frictional unemployment is considered voluntary. During a time where jobs are in abundance, the “discouraged worker” chooses not to seek employment.
I believe that including discouraged workers in the official unemployment rate would certainly provide “true” numbers as to how many households are really in need of employment and income. Based on my reading from Module I, in the section of Short-Run Growth and Unemployment, it explains that if a policy problem exists when there are too many households in the economy that are unemployed, government intervention is necessary if additional employment cannot be created (Argosy 2014). Basically, by not including the discouraged workers it makes the unemployment rate look better than it actually is. The government having to intervene will have a negative impact on the