The unemployment rate is one of the most important indicators of economic growth. Reducing unemployment is crucial to ensuring inclusive growth in a country. This paper analyses the relationship between the unemployment rate and other macroeconomic variables in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The purpose of the study is to compare and understand the observed unemployment disparities between southernmost and the rest of the SADC countries. It draws on the theoretical framework of the Phillips curve and Okun's law and uses static panel data and fully modified ordinary least squares techniques (FM-OLS) to estimate the empirical model. Annual data for the period 1991 to 2020 are used. Analyses are conducted both at the aggregate SADC data level and at the subgroup level, i.e. at the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and non-SACU country levels. Diagnostic tests are conducted to ensure the robustness of the models. The empirical results of this study show that labour productivity, external debt and population have significant effects on unemployment across the SADC region. Inflation, labour productivity and population have significant effects in SACU, while external debt, labour productivity and population have significant effects in non-SACU countries. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth and foreign direct investment (FDI) have mixed but insignificant effects on the unemployment rate, indicating a low employment elasticity of growth in the region.

A volatile real exchange rate and high unemployment rate is a growing concern in South Africa, therefore the right macroeconomic policy is required. The challenge is to find stability in the real exchange rate paired with a low inflation rate, both of which are necessary to promote long term economic growth, which in turn creates more job opportunities. This study analyses the impact of the exchange rate on unemployment in South Africa by considering quarterly data for the period 2003 to 2013. In this study, the macroeconomic transmission channel is divided into two transmission paths, imports and exports. These find their roots in the Phillips curve and the Keynesian theory on unemployment respectively. The vector error correction model (VECM), together with an analysis of the impulse response functions and variance decompositions, are implemented to determine the short and long run impacts of the exchange rate on unemployment. After the completion of a variety of specifications, estimations and tests, both macroeconomic transmission paths revealed in the empirical analysis that the real exchange rate has a significant impact on unemployment. In the imports transmission path, the real exchange rate, imports and the CPI have significant long term relationships with unemployment. Furthermore, the exports transmission path found significant short term relations with unemployment in considering the real exchange rate, exports and economic growth. The impulse responses in both transmission paths indicated that a shock in the exchange rate will have a significant effect on unemployment in the short run. Similar results were found with the variance decomposition. In the import transmission path, movements in the real exchange rate explained an increasing portion of the variance in unemployment. Alternatively, in the export transmission path the real exchange rate and exports explained an increasing portion of the variance. The evidence therefore suggests that South Africa should focus more on stabilising the exchange rate, since fluctuations in unemployment are a result of shocks in the real exchange rate, following the macroeconomic transmission channels discussed. / MCom (Economics)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015

A volatile real exchange rate and high unemployment rate is a growing concern in South Africa, therefore the right macroeconomic policy is required. The challenge is to find stability in the real exchange rate paired with a low inflation rate, both of which are necessary to promote long term economic growth, which in turn creates more job opportunities. This study analyses the impact of the exchange rate on unemployment in South Africa by considering quarterly data for the period 2003 to 2013. In this study, the macroeconomic transmission channel is divided into two transmission paths, imports and exports. These find their roots in the Phillips curve and the Keynesian theory on unemployment respectively. The vector error correction model (VECM), together with an analysis of the impulse response functions and variance decompositions, are implemented to determine the short and long run impacts of the exchange rate on unemployment. After the completion of a variety of specifications, estimations and tests, both macroeconomic transmission paths revealed in the empirical analysis that the real exchange rate has a significant impact on unemployment. In the imports transmission path, the real exchange rate, imports and the CPI have significant long term relationships with unemployment. Furthermore, the exports transmission path found significant short term relations with unemployment in considering the real exchange rate, exports and economic growth. The impulse responses in both transmission paths indicated that a shock in the exchange rate will have a significant effect on unemployment in the short run. Similar results were found with the variance decomposition. In the import transmission path, movements in the real exchange rate explained an increasing portion of the variance in unemployment. Alternatively, in the export transmission path the real exchange rate and exports explained an increasing portion of the variance. The evidence therefore suggests that South Africa should focus more on stabilising the exchange rate, since fluctuations in unemployment are a result of shocks in the real exchange rate, following the macroeconomic transmission channels discussed. / MCom (Economics)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015

The aim of the thesis is to identify and evaluate the unemployment situation in the Czech Republic. Which factors affect the problems of unemployment and what groups of people in the Czech Republic are the riskiest. I also focused on the activities of the employment offices in the Czech Republic and methods and measures for solving the problem of unemployment specifically. What tools and what methods are used to help job seekers find suitable jobs in the shortest possible timeframe. In the last part of the thesis I focused on the active employment policy instruments to assess which tools are used the most frequently by the employment office and why. The first part of the thesis deals with the problems of unemployment. This is a very variable quantity that depends not only on the economy state of the country, other factors are involved in it as well. One of these significant factors includes the mobility, which means the reluctance to commute. Mobility unfortunately does not only reflect the unwillingness of people to commute, it can be also affected by other factors, among which we can include poor transport infrastructure, transport lines cancelling and never- ending increase of fuel prices. A significant factor is the reluctance of people to migrate to work to regions where unemployment is...

The submitted diploma thesis is dedicated to the calculation of the estimation of output gap by three estimating techniques (Hodrick-Prescott filter, Kalman filtering, and Cobb-Douglas production function) for the Czech Republic during the years 1995-2009, and, consequently, to their usefulness for testing the Okun's law as a suitable predicative tool. In other words, which of the mentioned methods is the most appropriate one for an accurate prediction of the rate of unemployment. To achieve this, the Box-Jenkins methodology is used for modelling and designing the cyclical unemployment forecasts and dynamic version of the Okun's law. The results indicate that, for the given period, there is relatively strong and unstable relationship between changes in output gap and changes in cyclical unemployment in the Czech Republic. The most suitable technique for the estimating of the future development of unemployment gap seems to be the Cobb-Douglas production function approach. This is namely based on the quantity of gained forecast errors and Granger causality.

This master thesis analyses a labour market at the region Most that has high unemployment rate. After the theoretical basis, the structural analysis of unemployment and its development thesis researches disequilibrium of the labour market both on the side of supply (active employment policy particularly retraining) and demand (the biggest employers in the area). The goal of the thesis is the cost analysis of the efficiency allocated resources into retraining programme particularly into its returns. It is illustrated on model situations and then on the average situation. According to the results it is appraised the truth of the hypothesis that active employment policy is advantageous for state and employers than passive employment policy in the long period. Thesis uses statistic models, comparison, situation analysis and questionnaire.

The first essay studies the long term trend of internal migration in the United States. Over the last forty years, there has only been a modest change in the overall interstate migration rate in the United States. However, different demographic groups have seen very different patterns of changes. The migration rate for families with two college graduate spouses dropped from 5.66% in 1965-1970 to 2.82% in 2000-2005. As for the families with college-graduate husband, it dropped from 4.05% to 2.15% during the same time frame. Interstate migration rates for other types of families or singles have seen little change. This paper extends Mincer’s family migration model into a search framework and directly estimates the effects of female labor force participation, spousal earnings ratio, correlation of earnings from job offers, and home ownership on the migration propensity by using the Current Population Survey (CPS) data in the period of 1982-2005. Endogeniety issues of these variables are appropriately addressed. According to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis, we find that the increasing female labor force participation rate and earnings ratio of wife to husband are the primary determinants for the decline in the interstate migration rate of families with two college-graduate spouses and families with a college-graduate husband in the 1980s-1990s. The rising home ownership accounts for a large portion of the decrease in the migration rate of highly educated families, in the 1990s-2000s. The second essay studies the impact of changing youth cohort size on the unemployment rate. Although an increase in youth cohort size is often found to exert an upward pressure on the aggregate unemployment rate, it has been provided some empirical evidences and a theoretical model to the contrary. We find that the estimated elasticity of unemployment rate is quite sensitive in a fixed effect model, with the inclusion of year dummies, when there is a strong temporal correlation between the youth cohort size and the unemployment rate. Both the sign and magnitude of the estimates vary significantly when using data from different time periods. We propose an alternative way to control for the fixed effects and obtain consistent estimates across the time periods in the United States. Our results support the conventional wisdom of positive correlation between youth cohort size and aggregate unemployment rate. This positive effect of the youth cohort size is strongest for the youngest workers and gradually diminishes for older workers, which implies that the young and the prime age workers are not perfect substitutes to the employers.

This thesis seeks to predict the results of the presidential election in the United States, with a specific interest in swing states. I construct a methodology to predict the difference between the state and national two-party vote share for all 50 states plus D.C. using economic variables such as the change in the unemployment rate, the growth of real per capita Gross Domestic Product, Gallup poll ratings, and the ideology of the candidate. The methodology presented also allows the number of swing states to adjust between election years by giving each state its own coefficient on the difference between the state and national change in the unemployment rate. The resulting State-National Gap Model is then used to predict the two-party vote share for the Democrats using regression analysis with panel data for the elections from 1992-2008. My model is tested against the 2012 election and successfully predicts 49 out of 50 states as well as D.C.

[pt] Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar os efeitos do ciclo econômico no mercado de trabalho brasileiro entre os grupos demográficos. Nós iremos quantificar os efeitos do ciclo, períodos de crescimento e recessão, nas taxas de desemprego e ocupação entre indivíduos de diferentes idades, gêneros, escolaridade e raça. Utilizamos os microdados da PME, divulgada pelo IBGE, para estimar um modelo que mostra as reações à crise de cada grupo demográfico. Nosso estudo mostra que os grupos que mais sofrem durante a crise são mulheres brancas, jovens, e indivíduos com baixo nível educacional. Estes grupos registraram a maior reação nas taxas de desemprego e ocupação durante o ciclo comparado aos seus pares. Além disso, mostraremos que as diferenças entre os grupos podem ser explicadas, parcialmente, pela sua participação entre os setores da economia. / [en] In this paper we explore the effects of business cycle on labor market outcomes. We examine how the business cycles affect the occupation and unemployment rates across people of different age, gender, race and education. We use individual level data from PME, published by IBGE, to estimate a panel data model that calculates the sensitivity of each group to the business cycle in main metropolitan regions in Brazil. Our study shows that the impacts of cycles are not uniform across demographic groups and who are most sensible to business cycles are white women, youth and low education workers. These groups registered the greatest reaction in their unemployment and employment rates during recessions and booms, respectively, compared to their pairs. In addition, we show that the differences in the cyclicality across demographic groups can be explained in part by differences in their exposure to industry occupation employment.

Česká republika má míru nezaměstnanosti jednu z nejvyšších v Evropě. Naopak Velká Británie má míru nezaměstnanosti jednu z nejnižších. Jedním z nejlepších způsobů, jak nezaměstnanost snížit, je poskytovat kvalitní a tolik potřebné vzdělání. I když tuto skutečnost mnozí přehlížejí, právě porovnání těchto dvou zemí dokazuje, že tomu tak opravdu je. První a druhá kapitola obsahuje informace o vzdělanostních systémech v obou zemích. Obě kapitoly pak přibližují fakt, jak jsou vzdělání a zaměstnanost propojené obory. Další kapitoly přináší především porovnání obou zemí podle zvolených ukazatelů, které jsou čím dál tím více důležité. Pochopitelně nechybí ani nové trendy ve vzdělávání, které lze v současné době využít. V sedmé kapitole jsou uvedena rizika ale i příležitosti, které by měly vést ke zlepšení situace. Lze zde nalézt ale i doporučení, která by bylo dobré v České republice realizovat.