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Essay on Unemployment

Here we have shared the Essay on Unemployment in detail so you can use it in your exam or assignment of 150, 300, 500, or 1000 words.

You can use this Essay on Unemployment in any assignment or project whether you are in school (class 10th or 12th), college, or preparing for answer writing in competitive exams. 

Topics covered in this article.

Essay on Unemployment in 150-250 words

Essay on unemployment in 300-500 words, essay on unemployment in 500-1000 words.

Unemployment is a pressing issue that affects individuals and societies globally. It refers to the state of being without a job or a source of income despite actively seeking employment. Unemployment poses significant challenges, both economic and social, for individuals and communities.

The consequences of unemployment are far-reaching. Financial instability decreased living standards, and a loss of self-esteem and confidence are common outcomes. Individuals may face difficulties in meeting their basic needs, providing for their families, and planning for the future. Moreover, unemployment can lead to social unrest, increased crime rates, and a strain on public resources.

Addressing unemployment requires a multifaceted approach. It involves creating favorable economic conditions, promoting job growth through investment and entrepreneurship, and providing individuals with the necessary skills and training for employment opportunities. Furthermore, social safety nets, such as unemployment benefits and job placement services, play a crucial role in supporting those who are unemployed.

Efforts to reduce unemployment should also focus on addressing structural issues in the labor market, promoting fair employment practices, and encouraging inclusive growth. Additionally, fostering a supportive environment for innovation, research, and development can stimulate job creation and economic prosperity.

In conclusion, unemployment is a complex issue with wide-ranging implications for individuals and societies. It demands comprehensive strategies that encompass economic policies, skill development, and social support systems. By addressing unemployment effectively, we can strive towards a society where individuals have access to fulfilling work opportunities and can contribute to the overall well-being and prosperity of their communities.

Title: Unemployment – The Economic and Social Challenge

Introduction :

Unemployment is a pressing issue that affects individuals, families, and societies worldwide. It refers to the state of being without a job or a viable source of income despite actively seeking employment. High levels of unemployment have significant economic and social consequences, making it a critical challenge to address.

Causes of Unemployment

Unemployment can stem from various factors. Economic downturns and recessions often result in job losses as businesses struggle to sustain their operations. Technological advancements and automation have also led to job displacement, particularly in industries that rely heavily on manual labor. Globalization and outsourcing practices have contributed to the relocation of jobs to countries with lower labor costs, creating unemployment in certain regions.

Impact of Unemployment

Unemployment has far-reaching implications. Financial instability resulting from joblessness can lead to increased poverty rates, limited access to healthcare, and housing insecurity. It also strains social cohesion, as unemployed individuals may experience psychological distress, low self-esteem, and a loss of purpose. Moreover, long-term unemployment can lead to skills deterioration and a loss of work experience, making it increasingly difficult for individuals to re-enter the labor market.

Addressing Unemployment

Addressing unemployment requires a multi-faceted approach:

Economic Policies: Governments should implement policies that promote economic growth, investment, and job creation. This includes fostering a business-friendly environment, reducing bureaucratic barriers, and providing incentives for entrepreneurship and innovation. Additionally, targeted industry development strategies can identify sectors with growth potential and encourage job creation in those areas.

Education and Skills Development: Investing in education and skills development is crucial to equip individuals with the necessary competencies for available job opportunities. Collaboration between educational institutions, employers, and government agencies can help bridge the skills gap and ensure that individuals are prepared for the changing demands of the labor market. Upskilling and reskilling programs can help unemployed individuals acquire new skills and improve their employability.

Job Creation Initiatives: Governments should prioritize job creation initiatives, particularly in sectors with high growth potential. This can be achieved through infrastructure projects, green technology investments, and support for small and medium-sized enterprises. Public-private partnerships can also play a significant role in stimulating job creation and economic development.

Social Safety Nets: Establishing robust social safety nets is crucial to support those facing unemployment. Unemployment benefits, healthcare coverage, and access to retraining programs can help individuals meet their basic needs and regain economic stability while actively seeking employment. Such support systems alleviate the financial burden and provide a safety net during challenging times.

Conclusion :

Unemployment is a complex and persistent socioeconomic challenge that demands comprehensive solutions. By implementing effective economic policies, investing in education and skills development, promoting job creation, and providing social safety nets, societies can mitigate the impacts of unemployment and strive toward a more equitable and prosperous future. It is essential to address this issue with urgency, as reducing unemployment rates not only improves individual well-being but also fosters economic growth and social cohesion.

Title: Unemployment – A Dual Crisis of Economic Stability and Human Dignity

Unemployment is a complex and pervasive issue that affects individuals, families, and societies at large. It refers to the state of being without a job or a viable source of income despite actively seeking employment. High levels of unemployment have severe economic and social consequences, making it a pressing challenge that demands effective solutions and interventions. This essay aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the causes, impacts, and potential remedies for unemployment, recognizing its multifaceted nature and the need for a holistic approach.

I. Understanding Unemployment

Unemployment can be classified into various types based on its causes and duration. Structural unemployment arises from shifts in the economy, such as technological advancements or changes in market demand, rendering certain jobs obsolete. Cyclical unemployment, on the other hand, is caused by economic downturns and fluctuations in business cycles. Frictional unemployment occurs when individuals are between jobs or in transition, while seasonal unemployment is linked to seasonal variations in certain industries.

II. Economic Implications

Unemployment poses significant challenges to the economy at both micro and macro levels. At an individual level, it leads to a loss of income and financial instability, making it difficult for individuals to meet their basic needs, contribute to the economy, and plan for the future. Moreover, the lack of economic opportunities leads to a decrease in consumer spending, which negatively impacts businesses and reduces their profitability. This, in turn, can trigger downsizing, closures, and a negative cycle of job losses, further exacerbating the unemployment crisis.

On a macroeconomic scale, high unemployment rates hinder economic growth and development. The decline in consumer spending decreases demand for goods and services, creating a ripple effect throughout the economy. Governments also face challenges in generating tax revenues, leading to reduced public investment in infrastructure, education, and healthcare. Additionally, increased government spending on unemployment benefits and social support places a strain on public finances, potentially leading to higher budget deficits or cuts in other areas.

III. Social Consequences

Unemployment not only impacts individuals’ economic well-being but also has profound social implications. Financial instability resulting from joblessness can lead to increased poverty levels, housing insecurity, and limited access to healthcare, further exacerbating social inequalities. The psychological toll of unemployment cannot be overlooked, as individuals may experience feelings of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and a loss of purpose. This can strain relationships, lead to social isolation, and create a sense of hopelessness among the unemployed.

Furthermore, long-term unemployment can result in skills deterioration and a loss of work experience, making it increasingly difficult for individuals to re-enter the labor market. This perpetuates a cycle of unemployment and hinders upward social mobility, reinforcing existing inequalities and social divisions.

IV. Causes of Unemployment

Unemployment is influenced by a combination of economic, structural, and policy-related factors. Economic downturns, such as recessions or financial crises, can lead to widespread job losses as businesses struggle to stay afloat. Technological advancements and automation also contribute to job displacement, particularly in industries that rely heavily on manual labor. Globalization and outsourcing practices can result in the relocation of jobs to countries with lower labor costs, further aggravating unemployment in certain regions.

Inadequate education and skills training also contribute to unemployment. Rapid changes in the labor market demand individuals with up-to-date skills and knowledge. Failure to adapt and provide relevant training can leave individuals ill-equipped to secure employment in sectors with higher demand.

V. Addressing Unemployment

Effectively addressing unemployment requires a comprehensive approach that combines economic policies, education and skills development, job creation initiatives, and social safety nets. Some potential strategies include:

• Economic Policies
• Education and Skills Development
• Job Creation and Support
• Social Safety Nets

Economic Policies:

Governments should implement policies that foster a conducive business environment, promote investment, and stimulate job creation. This may involve reducing bureaucratic barriers, providing incentives for entrepreneurship and innovation, and investing in infrastructure projects to generate employment opportunities.

Education and Skills Development:

A focus on education and skills training is crucial to equip individuals with the necessary competencies for available job opportunities. Collaboration between educational institutions, employers, and government agencies can help bridge the skills gap and align education with labor market needs. Upskilling and reskilling programs should be promoted to ensure individuals can adapt to evolving job requirements.

Job Creation and Support:

Governments should prioritize job creation initiatives in sectors with growth potential, such as renewable energy, healthcare, technology, and infrastructure development. This can be achieved through investment incentives, public-private partnerships, and targeted industry development strategies. Additionally, providing job placement services, vocational training, and financial assistance to unemployed individuals can enhance their employability and facilitate their transition back into the workforce.

Social Safety Nets:

Establishing robust social safety nets is essential to provide temporary relief and assistance to those facing job loss. Unemployment benefits, healthcare coverage, and support for retraining can help individuals meet their basic needs and regain economic stability while actively seeking employment. Such measures help alleviate the negative impacts of unemployment and support individuals during periods of transition.

Unemployment is a dual crisis of economic stability and human dignity, impacting individuals and societies on multiple levels. The economic and social consequences of unemployment demand comprehensive and coordinated efforts to address its causes and mitigate its impacts. By implementing effective economic policies, investing in education and skills development, promoting job creation, and providing robust social safety nets, societies can strive towards reducing unemployment rates and creating a more inclusive and prosperous future for all.

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• School Education /

Essay on Unemployment: 100 to 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Mar 30, 2024

Writing an essay on unemployment provides an opportunity to explore a critical issue affecting societies worldwide. Unemployment, a multifaceted problem, has far-reaching consequences that touch upon various aspects of individuals, families, and nations. In this essay, we will delve into the complexities of unemployment, examine its causes and consequences, discuss government initiatives, and shed light on potential solutions.

Table of Contents

• 1 What is Unemployment?
• 2 Essay on Unemployment in 100 words
• 3 Essay on Unemployment in 200 words
• 4 Essay on Unemployment in 300 words
• 5 Tips to Ace in Writing An Essay

Must Read: The Beginner’s Guide to Writing an Essay

What is Unemployment?

Lack of jobs leads to unemployment. It is a very serious economic and social concern that is happening all around the globe leading to many social ills. This issue is a major one and hence many governments are trying to address it. When people of a nation are employed, that leads to the economic and social well-being of that nation. To address it, the education system needs to be modeled differently so as to increase the employability of people. In democracies, political parties use unemployment as a core issue in their election manifestos.

Essay on Unemployment in 100 words

Unemployment refers to the condition when individuals, capable and willing to work, are unable to secure gainful employment. It is a pervasive issue across the globe, with varying degrees of impact on societies. Unemployment results in financial instability, and emotional distress, and hampers individual growth. Governments and organizations must collaborate to create opportunities for employment through skill development and policy implementation.

Essay on Unemployment in 200 words

Unemployment, a pressing concern globally, stems from multiple factors that hinder the workforce’s engagement in productive activities. It affects both developed and developing nations, contributing to economic imbalances and social disparities. The consequences of unemployment include reduced income levels, increased poverty rates, and strained government resources. Moreover, the psychological toll it takes on individuals and families can be severe, leading to stress, depression, and strained relationships.

Essay on Unemployment in 300 words

The intricate web of unemployment is spun from a mix of causes, ranging from economic fluctuations to structural shifts in industries. Cyclical unemployment, driven by economic downturns, and structural unemployment, resulting from a mismatch between skills and job openings, are widespread forms. Additionally, technological advancements lead to technological unemployment as machines replace human labour.

Unemployment has cascading effects on societies. Diminished purchasing power affects market demand, thereby impacting economic growth. As unemployment rates rise, so does the burden on social welfare programs and the healthcare system. The phenomenon also fuels social unrest and political instability, making it a challenge governments cannot ignore.

Governments worldwide have initiated strategies to tackle unemployment. Skill development programs, vocational training, and entrepreneurship initiatives are designed to equip individuals with market-relevant skills. Furthermore, promoting labour-intensive industries and investing in sectors with growth potential can generate employment opportunities.

In conclusion, unemployment is a complex issue that necessitates a multi-pronged approach. Governments, industries, and individuals must collaborate to alleviate its impact. Effective policy implementation, education reforms, and the cultivation of entrepreneurial spirit can pave the way towards reducing unemployment rates and fostering a more stable and prosperous society.

Tips to Ace in Writing An Essay

Before we dive into the specifics of unemployment, let’s briefly discuss some tips to enhance your essay-writing skills:

• Understand the Prompt: Ensure a clear understanding of the essay prompt to address all its components effectively.
• Research Thoroughly: Gather relevant information from credible sources to build a comprehensive and informed essay.
• Organize Your Thoughts: Create an outline to structure your essay logically, allowing your ideas to flow coherently.
• Introduction and Conclusion: Craft a compelling introduction to engage your readers, and a succinct conclusion to summarize your key points.
• Use Clear Language: Express your ideas using clear and concise language, avoiding jargon or overly complex vocabulary.
• Provide Examples: Illustrate your points with real-life examples to enhance understanding and credibility.
• Edit and Proofread: Revise your essay for grammar, punctuation, and coherence to ensure a polished final draft.

Also Read: Unemployment v/s Underemployment – What’s Worse?

Related Reads:-     

Unemployment refers to the state in which individuals who are willing and able to work are without gainful employment opportunities. It is a condition where individuals seek jobs but are unable to secure them, leading to financial instability and societal challenges.

Unemployment, as discussed in the essay, is a multifaceted issue encompassing the lack of employment opportunities for willing and capable individuals. It explores various forms of unemployment, its causes, far-reaching consequences on economies and societies, and the role of governments in implementing solutions to mitigate its impact.

Unemployment is the term used to describe the situation where individuals of working age are actively seeking employment but are unable to find suitable job opportunities. It signifies a gap between the available workforce and available jobs, often leading to economic and social challenges within a society.

Unemployment emerges as a prominent thread, influencing economic, social, and psychological realms. As we’ve explored in this essay, comprehending the causes and consequences of unemployment is pivotal in devising solutions. Governments, institutions, and individuals must strive collectively to unravel this issue’s complexities and weave a fabric of employment opportunities, stability, and progress. We hope that this essay blog on Unemployment helps. For more amazing daily reads related to essay writing , stay tuned with Leverage Edu .

Manasvi Kotwal

Manasvi's flair in writing abilities is derived from her past experience of working with bootstrap start-ups, Advertisement and PR agencies as well as freelancing. She's currently working as a Content Marketing Associate at Leverage Edu to be a part of its thriving ecosystem.

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Unemployment Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Unemployment can be defined as the condition where citizens of a country are jobless and have in the recent past been involved in searching work without a success. Unemployment rate can be defined as the prevalence of unemployment opportunities in a country. The unemployment index is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by the number of individuals in the labour force (Arestis & John 15).

I have chosen the unemployment situation because of the increasing and prevalent unemployment rates in various countries.

Recent statistics indicate that, the rate of unemployment is on the increase and there is a lot of information to cover the complex area of unemployment. There are various reasons which cause unemployment in a country. The following are some of the reasons that cause unemployment rate in a country (Arestis & John 20).

• Advances in new technologies. New technologies to a large extent replace the human labour force which renders most human beings as unemployed.
• Population increase. The level of unemployment is believed to go up as population in a country increases. Increase in population leads to an increased pressure on the available resources. These limited resources are few and cannot accommodate the increasing demands of the population
• National policies. Some countries have stringent national policies that favour the increase in the unemployment levels in a country. These national policies will always restrict the participation of certain gender groups in specific employment sectors. For example, some countries restricts the participation of women in many employment sectors especially the building, and construction sector.
• Political environments also play a major role towards increasing the rate of unemployment. Political environments that increase the rate of unemployment are quite dominant especially in the developing countries. Such environments will enhance political vices such as nepotism and corruption which undermines the possibility of having fair distribution of employment opportunities to citizens.
• Economic depression. Economic depression is a form of economic recession that is long-term which is characterized by a downturn in the various economic activities in a country.

In analyzing this complex situation of unemployment, it is of vital importance to consider the application of various system analyzing tools such as “tools, methods, methodology and many techniques”. This will make the analysis of the complex situation being analyzed to be understood easily.

In my research I will analyze the complex process of unemployment with the aim of creating a sustainable environment in the employment sector.

The research will encompass the various causes of unemployment rates, the challenges being encountered in the process of reducing unemployment rates. The research will critically analyze the various types of unemployment and, the mechanisms which can be adopted in order to reduce the prevalent rates of unemployment.

Unemployment is a complex problem facing many countries presently. The process of reducing unemployment rates can be a daunting process fraught with disappointments. As a summary of the major findings of the research, the major cause of unemployment is lack of information among citizens, and poor governance policies in a country (Arestis & John 30).

Various citizens are ignorant on how to effectively utilize the available natural and human resources to create employment. They lack a sense of creativity which could possibly create employment opportunities. Also, most citizens are ignorant on how to effectively participate in democratic governance process.

This ignorance eventually creates autocratic governance regimes which fosters nepotism and corruption. These political vices reduce the availability of employment opportunities in a country, leading to unemployment (Arestis & John 15).

One key requirement of a good system practitioner is the ability of the system practitioner to apply the various models, methods and theories of system practitioner into the real life.

My undertaking of this project will assist me to apply the various system practitioner concepts learnt in class to the real life complex scenario of unemployment (Jacques & Stephen, 1994, pg. 21). In analyzing the complexity associated with unemployment, I will consider the various theories of complex management which I will discuss along with the development of this paper.

Applying hard systems method

Before analyzing the complex process of unemployment, it is important to make a distinction between hard and soft systems. Hard systems can be defined as those problems that deal with the “how” questions. For example, the question of how to increase the rate of employment is an example of a hard problem.

A hard problem is always characterized by the fact that there is a distinct solution, and there are a number of defined goals that are well defined which should be accomplished. On the other hand, a soft system is a problem that encompasses both the “how” and “what” questions (Jacques & Stephen, 1994, pg. 27)

The complex process of unemployment could be well analyzed using the hard system method of approach. The hard system method tries to analyze a complex problem through many stages which will be discussed in this paper.

There are various advantages that are associated with the use of the hard system methodology of concept analysis. The following are some of the advantages of using the hard system method (Jacques & Stephen, 1994, pg. 35)

• It provides a deeper understanding and analysis of the problem of unemployment and answers the question of how to mitigate the unemployment problem.
• Hard system analysis provides answers to other complex problems related to unemployment like how to use technology to increase the rate of employment.

The following diagram indicates the application of hard system in the analysis of unemployment.

The above diagram indicates the various processes that will be undertaken in the analysis of the unemployment problem.

Stage 1. System description

System description will always indicate the current position and status of the problem being analyzed. Currently we are experiencing a high rate of unemployment which is characterized by the increasing population rate. The world population is estimated at 7 billion people.

The available limited employment resources are not sufficient to carter for the demands of the 7 billion individuals. This eventually piles up pressure on the resources that could be used to create employment opportunities, hence leading to an increased level of unemployment (Steger, Maznevski & Wolfgang 39).

The following table illustrates the world population by continent by 2011.

The alarming increase in the level of unemployment creates a need for analyzing the complex concept of unemployment with the aim of unmasking the strategies to be adopted in order to reduce unemployment rates (Arestis & John 55).

The following table indicates the world top ten countries by unemployment rate

The above data directly underpins the fact that unemployment is a complex prevalent issue. If much is not done to contain the issue, then, the issue will become out of control and cause adverse effects to the limited human, and natural resources available (Arestis & John 60).

Stage 2. Identification of constraints and objectives

The main objective of this sturdy is to identify the various causes of unemployment and any relevant measure that can be adopted to mitigate the problem of unemployment. Also, the sturdy is aimed at identifying the reasons as to why there is a huge gap between the unemployment rates in developed countries and the developing countries (Steger, Maznevski & Wolfgang 40).

The major projected constrain is the political environments and government policies and ideologies governing the utilization of resources, and the creation of employment opportunities.

Stage 3. Generation of routes to objectives

• Governments and relevant stakeholders should ensure that, there is gender equity and equality in the allocation of employment opportunities.
• Governments should adopt various strategies that will involve the citizens in the creation of employment opportunity for self-sustainability. A self-sustenance economy should be adopted which can be achieved through promotion of innovation and creativity.
• Removal of political and governance ideologies that promote nepotism, and corruption.
• Creation of public awareness and increased public participation in the governance process.

Stage 4. Formulating measures for performance

Measures of performance will measure to what extent has the research objectives been met. In order to measure the performance, the unemployment index will be recorded for the next five years after the activities stipulated in the routes to objectives have been undertaken.

The unemployment index obtained will then be compared to unemployment index done before undertaking this research. The comparison will give vital information as to whether there is been an improvement in the unemployment index after the adoption of the routes to objectives (Zimmer & Jake 44).

Stage 5. Modeling

The modeling process will involve those activities that are geared towards determining the outcomes of the research (Zimmer & Jake 51). In order to identify the outcomes, a survey will be carried out after every year for the next five years to find out the rate of unemployment.

This will be calculated by dividing the number of employed individuals by the number of unemployed individuals. The index obtained will then be compared in order to determine whether there is an improvement or a decline in the unemployment rate (Arestis & John 31).

Stage 6. Evaluation

The evaluation stage is the most important stage in the analysis of the complex issue. Evaluation will involve the analysis of the outcomes obtained from the modelling stage. The evaluation will involve the analysis of the disparities that will be recorded in the research.

This will involve the sturdy of what factors are causing the disparity and how to re-align and reconfigure the process routes in order to achieve the research objectives. Evaluation process might also include the prototyping technique where the routes are tested, and retested in order to determine their viability before being fully implemented (Zimmer & Jake 71).

Stage 7. Selecting the best routes to objectives

After the evaluation process, the best route towards achieving the objectives should be selected. The route chosen should ensure that the research objectives have been met to a large extent. In the analysis of unemployment, the best route that was identified was the creation of awareness and involving the individuals in the governance process (Steger, Maznevski & Wolfgang 59).

This route will increase the level of democracy in a country hence creating equal employment opportunities for both women and men. Also, creating public awareness will ensure that citizens are well equipped with knowledge of how to effective utilize resources and create employment opportunities.

Also, public participation in the governance process will ensure that the governance policies adopted foster democracy which is a key ingredient towards reducing the rate of unemployment (Arestis & John 75).

Stage 8. Implementation of the selected routes

The implementation process will involve the process of adopting and enrolling the best selected route. In the case of unemployment, the selected route of creating awareness and increasing public participation in the governance process will be adopted.

Creating awareness will involve conducting of seminars to enlighten the public on how to effectively use the available resources, and how to create employment opportunities through innovation (Steger, Maznevski & Wolfgang 69).

Public participation in the process of policy formulation will be achieved through promotion of civic education among citizens on how to carefully vote and chose leaders with integrity.

Also, the civic education will be aimed at increasing public participation in government related projects, and governance processes starting from the grassroots government structures. Also, the civic education will aim at educating citizens on how they can get access to public funds and amenities.

Stakeholders involved

Stakeholders can be described as those people who are in one way or the other affected by the problem of unemployment. Also, stakeholders in one way or the other affect the entire problem of unemployment. Stakeholders can negatively or positively be affected by the unemployment concept.

On the other hand, stakeholders can positively or negatively influence the prevalence of unemployment concept (Jacques & Stephen, 1994, pg. 75)

The following tables indicates a summary of the how stakeholders are affected/affect the unemployment concept

Ethicality statement

As a system practitioner I fully commit myself to the various ethical guidelines that should be followed whenever undertaking any research work. I will consider the following ethical consideration I my research undertaking:

• The data collected will be solely used for the purpose of the research, and no client data will be used for any other purposes not stipulated in the research.
• The clients will be fully informed on the purpose of the research, and the duration the research is going to take.
• The participation of subjects in the research will be voluntary, and out of consent. Where approval is required, then, the relevant approving bodies will be sought.

Conclusion and recommendations

In conclusion, it is evident from the research that unemployment is a complex issue that can be solved abstractly. With the increasing levels of unemployment, much has to be done in order to mitigate and reduce the rate of unemployment. This calls for public awareness, and participation in the entire process of creating employment. Such a complex issue should not be entrusted in the hands of greedy and selfish leaders.

Project log

The entire project will be spread over a period of six weeks with the first two weeks dealing with the preparation process and the last four weeks dealing with the data collection and analysis. The five weeks have been broken into three phases.

The following table indicates the project log phases.

Week 1 and week 2

During the first two weeks, I was involved in the process of consulting my colleagues and tutor to try and sought out their opinion about the topic. This gave a chance to discuss the various available methodologies that could be used in the sturdy. Also, this gave a chance to identify whether unemployment is a complex process or not.

Also, during the first week, I was able to undertake a literature review in order to determine what other researchers have done about the unemployment concept. The literature review sufficed me with relevant information about the unemployment concept.

Also, the information obtained was useful in avoiding mistakes done by previous researchers. The literature review involved researching the relevant literature materials like the internet, books, journals, and articles. I also obtained a chance of visiting various libraries in order to find out more information about the unemployment concept.

Week 3, 4 and 5

Most of the research work was conducted during the third, fourth and the fifth week. Various data was collected about the unemployment rate of individuals. Also, clients were required to fill in a survey form and a questionnaire in order to determine the causes of unemployment. Also, the subjects were required to give their individual opinions about what could be done in order to reduce the rate of unemployment.

Various data collections methods were employed in the process of data collection which includes the following methods; survey forms, questionnaires, and interviews.

Subjects were required to fill in questionnaires which sought to find out what were the causes of unemployment and what could be done to reduce the unemployment rates. Subjects were also required to fill in a survey form to determine whether the government is doing much to contain the problem of unemployment.

A series of interviews were also conducted with the aim of finding more first-hand information about the problem of unemployment. A total of three interviews were conducted during the entire period of the project. The following are the interviews that were conducted during the time of research.

The sixth week of the research was purely dedicated to data analysis and the sturdy of the findings. The data collected was analyzed and compared to previous data that was collected by other researchers on the same subject. The data analysis stage involved the application of the hard system on the complex process of unemployment. Various stages of the hard system methodology were studied in respect to unemployment.

Also, the compilation of the results obtained was done on the sixth week. This was the last week of the project undertaking, and due consultation was made to ensure that the project is up to date and with the relevant requirements.

I also, spent some time with my project supervisor in order to discuss the application of TMA in the complex process of unemployment. My supervisor advice helped a lot in the development of the project in the sense that, the information I was given largely assisted in the ensuring the realization of the research objectives.

Summary of the project log

In this section of the report, I will cover a brief summary of what I have been able to undertake during my six weeks of undertaking the project.

Undertaking the T306 course has largely helped build more on the concept that I learnt in my previous course, T205-An approach to system thinking. Managing complexity has equipped me with knowledge of how to apply various managing complexity theories, systems, and methodology in analyzing complex situations.

During the first five weeks of my project undertaking, I was extensively involved in the process of data collection and literature review. This introduced me to a number of literature and concept regarding the problem of unemployment. It also introduced me to a wide range of knowledge regarding data collection methods like interviews, questionnaires, and surveys.

The last week of the project was dedicated to data analysis. During this period of data analysis, various data analysis techniques were employed to analyze the data. This introduced me to a wide range of scientific data analysis methods of analyzing data.

Client report

The major client in the above research is the unemployed citizen or individual. They are the ones who are largely affected by the rising unemployment rate. Most of the unemployed individuals or citizens have the common ideology that it is the responsibility of government and private sectors to create employment.

Such an ideology is wrong because the process of creating employment opportunities is neither a government responsibility nor the responsibility of the private sector. It is a collective responsibility that has to be done by the collaboration of the citizens, the private sector, and the government.

There are various forms of employment that currently exists. One can be self employed which means that, they are their own employers. This form of employment fosters renovation and a spirit of entrepreneurship among citizens. This spirit eventually promotes innovation and creativity which eventually creates employment opportunities.

Also, citizens should be made to understand that, democracy plays a major role towards creation of employment opportunities. Democracy ensures accountability and transparency towards the use of resources, hence creating avenues for more employment opportunities. On the other hand, corruption, nepotism, and violence lead to misuse of resources which eventually blocks avenues for creating employment opportunities.

In order to reduce the adverse effects associated with unemployment, citizens should engage in innovation and creative activities. This will enhance the proper utilization of resources and eventually creating employment opportunities. One major desirable aspect of a good economy is the ability to be self sustainable.

A self sustainable economy will ensure that citizens have the services and products they require. One way of ensuring a self sustaining economy is by having citizens engage in innovative and creative activities. Such activities will lead to specialization, and creation of more job, and employment opportunities.

Works Cited

Arestis, Philip & McCombie, John. Unemployment: Past and Present . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.

Jaques, Elliott, and Stephen, Clement. Executive Leadership: A Practical Guide to Managing Complexity . Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1994. Print.

Steger, Ulrich & Maznevski, Martha & Wolfgang, Amann. Managing Complexity in Global Organizations . Chichester, West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print.

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Home — Essay Samples — Economics — Unemployment — Understanding Unemployment: Types, Causes, and Solutions

Understanding Unemployment: Types, Causes, and Solutions

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Published: Feb 12, 2024

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Unemployment

• Hidden unemployment: This refers to cases of unemployment that are not officially recorded. Many instances of unemployment go unreported, and government statistics do not accurately represent the true extent of the problem.
• Cyclical unemployment: This type of unemployment occurs as a result of fluctuations in the economy. During periods of economic downturn, there is a decrease in job opportunities, leading to a rise in unemployment rates.
• Seasonal unemployment: Some jobs are only available during specific seasons and are not available year-round. Individuals working in such seasonal jobs are considered unemployed during the off-season (Abbot, 2010).
• Long-term unemployment: This refers to individuals who have been unemployed for an extended period, usually six months or more. Long-term unemployment can have severe consequences for individuals and society as a whole.
• Underemployment: Underemployment occurs when individuals are employed in jobs that do not fully utilize their skills and qualifications. They are often working in positions below their educational or experiential level.
• Hardcore unemployment: This type of unemployment is caused by personal reasons such as mental, psychological, or physical barriers that prevent individuals from securing employment.
• Structural unemployment: Structural changes in the economy, such as technological advancements or shifts in industries, can lead to job losses and a reduction in work opportunities. This type of unemployment is referred to as structural unemployment.
• Frictional unemployment: Frictional unemployment occurs when individuals become unemployed due to conflicts or incompatibility between two different jobs or occupations.
• Economic growth: Economic growth can have both positive and negative effects on unemployment. While economic growth indicates a thriving economy, it can also lead to a decrease in employment opportunities. As the economy grows, certain industries may become obsolete, resulting in job losses.
• Technology: Technological advancements often lead to job displacement as machines and automation replace human labor. This trend is particularly evident in industries where capital-intensive mechanisms are used, making it more cost-effective to employ machines than humans.
• Seasonal fluctuations: Certain industries, such as agriculture and tourism, experience seasonal variations in demand. During off-peak seasons, workers in these industries may face unemployment.
• Microeconomic policies: Changes in microeconomic policies can impact employment levels. The implementation of new policies may lead to economic uncertainty, causing businesses to reduce their workforce or delay hiring.
• Constraints in economic growth: Economic constraints and uncertainties can discourage companies from hiring new employees. During periods of economic downturn, companies may lay off staff to cut costs.
• Abbot, L. (2010). Theories of the Labour Market and Employment: A Review. Washington: Industrial Systems Research.
• Harris, N. (2001). Business economics: theory and application. London: Butterworth-Heinemann.
• Hooks, G. (2003). Unemployment: Causes and Solutions. New York: Routledge.
• Symes, E. (1995). Unemployment: A Social Analysis. London: Routledge.

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• What Is Unemployment? Causes, Types, and Measurement CURRENT ARTICLE
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• Natural Unemployment
• Structural Unemployment

Unemployment refers to a situation where a person actively searches for employment but is unable to find work. Unemployment is considered to be a key measure of the health of the economy. The most frequently used measure of unemployment is the unemployment rate. It's calculated by dividing the number of unemployed people by the number of people in the labor force.

Key Takeaways

• Unemployment occurs when workers who want to work are unable to find jobs.
• High rates of unemployment signal economic distress while extremely low rates of unemployment may signal an overheated economy.
• Unemployment can be classified as frictional, cyclical, structural, or institutional.
• Unemployment data is collected and published by government agencies in a variety of ways.
• Many governments offer unemployed individuals a small amount of income through unemployment insurance, as long as they meet certain requirements.

How is Unemployment Defined?

Unemployment is a key economic indicator because it signals the ability (or inability) of workers to obtain gainful work and contribute to the productive output of the economy. More unemployed workers mean less total economic production.

The unemployment definition doesn't include people who leave the workforce for reasons such as retirement, higher education, and disability.

Sign of Economic Distress

Unemployed workers must maintain at least subsistence consumption during their period of unemployment. This means that an economy with high unemployment has lower output without a proportional decline in the need for basic consumption.

High, persistent unemployment can signal serious distress in an economy and even lead to social and political upheaval.

Sign of an Overheating Economy

A low unemployment rate, on the other hand, means that the economy is more likely to be producing near its full capacity, maximizing output, driving wage growth, and raising living standards over time.

However, extremely low unemployment can also be a cautionary sign of an overheating economy, inflationary pressures, and tight conditions for businesses in need of additional workers.

Categories of Unemployment

While the definition of unemployment is clear, economists divide unemployment into many different categories. The two broadest categories are voluntary and involuntary unemployment. When unemployment is voluntary, it means that a person left their job willingly in search of other employment. When it is involuntary, it means that a person was fired or laid off and must now look for another job.

Types of Unemployment

Voluntary and involuntary unemployment can be broken down into four types. We highlight them below.

This type of unemployment is usually short-lived. It is also the least problematic from an economic standpoint. It occurs when people voluntarily change jobs. After a person leaves a company, it naturally takes time to find another job. Similarly, graduates just starting to look for jobs to enter the workforce add to frictional unemployment.

Frictional unemployment is a natural result of the fact that market processes take time and information can be costly. Searching for a new job, recruiting new workers, and matching the right workers to the right jobs all take time and effort. This results in frictional unemployment.

Cyclical unemployment is the variation in the number of unemployed workers over the course of economic upturns and downturns, such as those related to changes in oil prices. Unemployment rises during recessionary periods and declines during periods of economic growth.

Preventing and alleviating cyclical unemployment during recessions is one of the key reasons for the study of economics and the various policy tools that governments employ to stimulate the economy on the downside of business cycles.

Structural unemployment comes about through a technological change in the structure of the economy in which labor markets operate. Technological changes can lead to unemployment among workers displaced from jobs that are no longer needed. Examples of such changes include the replacement of horse-drawn transport with automobiles and the automation of manufacturing.

Retraining these workers can be difficult, costly, and time-consuming. Displaced workers often end up either unemployed for extended periods or leaving the labor force entirely.

Institutional Unemployment

Institutional unemployment results from long-term or permanent institutional factors and incentives in the economy. The following can all contribute to institutional unemployment:

• Government policies , such as high minimum wage floors, generous social benefits programs, and restrictive occupational licensing laws
• Labor market phenomena, including efficiency wages and discriminatory hiring
• Labor market institutions, such as high rates of unionization

Many governments offer unemployment insurance to certain unemployed individuals who meet eligibility requirements.

How to Measure Unemployment

The U.S. government uses surveys, census counts, and the number of unemployment insurance claims to track unemployment.

The U.S. Census conducts a monthly survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) on behalf of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to produce the primary estimate of the nation’s unemployment rate. This survey has been done every month since 1940.

The sample consists of about 60,000 eligible households. That translates to about 110,000 people each month. The Census changes a quarter of the sampled households each month so that no household is represented for more than four consecutive months. This is meant to strengthen the reliability of the estimates.

Many variations of the unemployment rate exist, with different definitions of who is an unemployed person and who is in the labor force.

The BLS commonly cites the U-3 unemployment rate (defined as the total unemployed as a percentage of the civilian labor force) as the official unemployment rate; however, this definition does not include discouraged unemployed workers who are no longer looking for work.

Other categories of unemployment include discouraged workers and part-time or underemployed workers who want to work full-time but, for economic reasons, are unable to do so.

History of Unemployment

Although the U.S. government began tracking unemployment in the 1940s, the highest rate of unemployment to date occurred during the Great Depression, when unemployment rose to 24.9% in 1933.

Between 1931 and 1940, the unemployment rate remained above 14% but subsequently dropped down to the single digits. It remained there until 1982 when it climbed above 10%.

In 2009, during the Great Recession, unemployment again rose to 10%. In April 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment hit 14.8%. As of August 2024, the unemployment rate was 4.2%.

What Are the Main Causes of Unemployment?

There are many reasons for unemployment. These include recessions, depressions, technological improvements, job outsourcing, and voluntarily leaving one job to find another.

What Are the 3 Types of Unemployment?

Today's economists point to three main types of unemployment: frictional, structural, and cyclical. Frictional unemployment is the result of voluntary employment transitions within an economy. Frictional unemployment naturally occurs, even in a growing, stable economy as workers change jobs.

Structural unemployment can produce permanent disruptions due to fundamental and permanent changes that occur in the structure of the economy. These changes can marginalize a group of workers. They include technological changes, a lack of relevant skills, and jobs moving overseas to another country. Cyclical unemployment relates to the loss of jobs that occurs during changes in business cycles.

What Is the Strict Definition of Unemployment?

The official unemployment definition comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which states that "people are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior four weeks, and are currently available for work."

Unemployment is when an individual who is not employed and is seeking employment, cannot find work. Unemployment is a key indicator of the health of an economy. A low unemployment rate represents a strong economy while a high unemployment rate represents a weak economy.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “ How the Government Measures Unemployment ."

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. " Concepts and Definitions (CPS) ."

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. " Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization for States, 2023 Annual Averages ."

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “ Table A-15. Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization .”

U.S. Census Bureau. " U.S. Census Bureau History: The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942 ."

U.S. Census Bureau. " Chapter D, Labor: Labor Force (Series D 1-682) ." Page 135.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED. “ Unemployment Rate .”

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Economics: Unemployment, Its Causes and Types

This essay sample explores solutions, types, and causes of unemployment. Read it to get ideas for your essay about unemployment.

Unemployment Essay Introduction

Unemployment, types of unemployment, causes of unemployment, conclusion for unemployment essay.

Unemployment has become a major problem in almost every society. The challenges posed by unemployment are both social and economical in nature. Under normal circumstances, unemployment leads to despondency since a section of society lacks ways of earning a living.

This affects not only the economic status of the society but also the political and social aspects. It is against this background that a lot of efforts are put in place so as to address the issue of unemployment. Job creation is one sure way of ensuring that unemployment is under control.

This involves concerted efforts to bring about opportunities to work through which income can be generated. However, unemployment is of different types, and a better understanding of the same is crucial in the event of finding a meaningful solution.

Furthermore, unemployment is caused by several factors which are responsible for the whole situation. The aim of this paper is to navigate through the light of unemployment, thoroughly analyzing the causes and types of the same.

Unemployment refers to a situation in which qualified people are seeking employment but remain unemployed. This is primarily due to the scarcity of job opportunities or other different causes. Unemployment, therefore, leads to a lack of a source of income, thus affecting the economic condition of the society. Unemployment takes different forms and shapes (Harris, 2001).

The condition of unemployment differs from society to society, depending on the factors responsible for the situation. This brings out the fact that unemployment does not occur in a uniform manner; it rather takes different forms depending on the various forces in the social, economic, and political arenas.

Unemployment is a major problem that needs to be addressed by all means. However, a better understanding of the causes and types of unemployment is necessary for the event of finding an appropriate solution to the whole situation.

Unemployment occurs in different forms. Under normal circumstances, the type of unemployment is denoted by the nature of factors that have brought about the situation. As a result, unemployment is categorized by forces that play a role in the creation of the situation (Hooks 2003).

Another important factor in the categorization of unemployment is the manner in which the situation occurs and for how long it occurs. In such a situation, certain forms of unemployment tend to be repetitive in nature, while others only take place once.

The seriousness of the unemployment problem also forms a good basis for its categorization. Under normal circumstances, unemployment is categorized in economic terms. Therefore the dynamics of economics play an important role in the whole scenario.

There are several types of unemployment that occur in different forms and are brought about by different situations and circumstances. The following are the types of unemployment;

• Hidden unemployment
• Cyclical unemployment
• Seasonal unemployment
• Long-term unemployment
• Underemployment
• Hardcore unemployment
• Structural unemployment
• Frictional unemployment

Hidden unemployment refers to cases of unemployment that are not represented in the official records of unemployment. This happens since many cases of unemployment are unreported, and statistics given by government agencies don’t represent them. Seasonal unemployment, on the other hand, refers to those jobs that are seasonal in nature.

These kinds of jobs only operate during certain times and not others (Abbot 2010). During the seasons, when the jobs are not on, the workers are considered unemployed. When there are certain structural changes in the status of the economy, there are kinds of changes that take place, which lead to loss of jobs and a reduction of opportunities for work.

This situation is referred to as structural unemployment. It is brought about by structural changes in the economy. Unemployment caused by personal reasons is called hardcore unemployment.

These reasons might be mental, psychological, or physical in nature. Individuals who engage in two different careers can find themselves unemployed due to the nature of their occupation. This kind of unemployment is called frictional unemployment. It is brought about by the conflict between two different jobs rendering people unemployed.

Unemployment is caused by several factors, and there is no single factor that is responsible for unemployment. As a result, there are a number of factors that combine to bring about a lack of opportunities and the fact of qualified people remaining unemployed (Symes 1995).

Fundamentally the causes of unemployment are economic in nature. As such, the plight of unemployment is brought about by factors that are inherently economic in nature. Economic forces and activities, to a large extent, determine the nature and cause of most unemployment problems. Also, factors that deal with labor and personnel are responsible for a large number of unemployment cases.

The following are causes of unemployment;

• Economic growth
• Microeconomic policies
• Constraints in economic growth

The process of economic growth has a lot of relevance to the plight of unemployment. Under normal circumstances, unemployment is an economic problem. The forces that bring about unemployment are economic in nature.

Economic growth, for instance, has a lot of significance to the whole situation of unemployment. The level of economic activity prevailing at any given moment has a lot of significance on the state of unemployment at the time.

During the process of economic growth, there is a trend that follows; this normally involves a decrease in employment opportunities. This automatically leads to a rise in the levels of unemployment. Therefore economic growth has a negative effect on the rate of unemployment in the economy. Technology also leads to high levels of unemployment; this is primarily due to the replacement of humans with machines.

With the increase in the innovation of technology, more tasks are performed by machines making it unnecessary to employ people. This makes people lose their jobs to machines since it becomes cheaper to use machines than employ people. Another factor in the same vein of technology is the use of the capital intensive mechanism. As a result, the jobs that can be performed by people are done by machines (Stretton 1999).

The role played by policies of microeconomic nature in the creation of unemployment in society cannot be underestimated. These policies normally lead to a sudden change in the economic environment making certain adjustments that lead to unemployment.

This happens when new policies are set out in place. During the initial times of implementation, the economic environment responds with fear and panic, thus causing a sudden disappearance of opportunities for career.

Constraints in economic growth lead to uncertainty among various economic players making the chances of unemployment to reduce. There is usually rampant unemployment during times of economic uncertainty. Two reasons, first, most companies won’t employ anyone during the times of economic constraints. Secondly, many companies lay off their staff during times of slackness and low economic activity.

Unemployment is a problem that is economic in nature. Most of the factors that bring about unemployment have an economic connotation. However, the effects of unemployment go beyond the economic arena. There are several types of unemployment that are grouped according to various factors that cause the plight.

Furthermore, unemployment is not caused by one single factor; there are several forces that cause unemployment in different ways. The paper has taken an analytical look at the whole concept of unemployment. Priority has been given to the causes and types of unemployment.

The paper thus found out that unemployment is caused by various forces that are economical, social, and political in nature. At the same time, the paper found out that there is a different categorization of unemployment. This is normally done with the purpose of defining the essence of the unemployment problem in question.

Abbot, L. (2010). Theories of the Labour Market and Employment: A Review. Washington: Industrial Systems Research.

Harris, N. (2001). Business economics: theory and application. London: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Hooks, J. (2003). Economics: fundamentals for financial services providers. Washington: Kogan Page Publishers.

Stretton, H. (1999). Economics: a new introduction . Washington: Pluto Press.

Symes, V. (1995). Unemployment in Europe: problems and policies. New York: Routledge.

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Unemployment Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on unemployment.

Unemployment is a very serious issue not only in India but in the whole world. There are hundreds and thousands of people out there who do not have employment . Besides, the problems of unemployment are very severe in India because of the growing population and demand for jobs. Moreover, if we neglect this problem then it will be going to become the reason for the doom of the nation.

What is Unemployment?

Unemployment refers to a situation in which a skilled and talented people wanted to do a job. But cannot find a proper job due to several reasons.

Types of Unemployment

Now we know what is unemployment but unemployment does not only mean that the person does not have a job. Likewise, unemployment also includes people working in areas out of their expertise.

The various types of unemployment include disguised unemployment, seasonal unemployment, open unemployment, technological unemployment, structural unemployment. Besides, some other unemployment is cyclic unemployment, educated unemployment, underemployment, frictional unemployment, chronic unemployment, and casual unemployment.

Above all, seasonal unemployment, under unemployment, and disguised unemployment are the most common unemployment that is found in India.

Reasons for Unemployment

In a country like India, there is much reason for a large section of the population for being unemployed. Some of these factors are population growth, slow economic growth , seasonal occupation, slow growth of the economic sector, and fall in the cottage industry.

Moreover, these are the major reason for unemployment in India. Also, the situation has become so drastic that highly educated people are ready to do the job of a sweeper. Besides, the government is not doing his work seriously.

Apart from all these, a large portion of the population is engaged in the agricultural sector and the sector only provides employment in harvest or plantation time.

In addition, the biggest reason of unemployment in India is its vast population which demands a large number of jobs every year which the government and authorities are unable to provide.

Consequences of Unemployment

If things will go on like the current scenario then unemployment will become a major issue. Apart from this, the following things happen in an economy which is an increase in poverty, an increase in crime rate, exploitation of labor, political instability, mental health, and loss of skills. As a result, all this will eventually lead to the demise of the nation.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Initiative by Government

The government has taken the problem very seriously and have taken measures to slowly reduce unemployment. Some of these schemes includes IRDP (Integrated Rural Development Programme), DPAP (Drought Prone Area Programme), Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, Employment Assurance Scheme, NRY (Nehru Rozgar Yojana), Training for self-Employment, PMIUPEP (Prime Minister’s Integrated Urban Poverty Eradication Program), employment exchange, Employment Guarantee Scheme, development of organized sector, small and cottage industries, employment in forging countries, and Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana and few more.

Besides, these schemes the government also make some rules flexible, so that employment can be created in the private sector also.

To conclude, we can say that the problem of unemployment in India has reached a critical stage. But, now the government and local authorities have taken the problem seriously and working on it to reduce unemployment. Also, to completely solve the issue of unemployment we have to tackle the main issue of unemployment that is the vast population of India.

FAQs about Unemployment

Q.1 Why there is a problem of unemployment in India? A.1 Due to overpopulation and lack of proper skills there is a problem of unemployment in India.

Q.2 Define Disguised unemployment? A.2 Disguised unemployment refers to a form of employment in which more than the required numbers of people work in industry or factory. And removing some employee will not affect productivity.

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Essay on Unemployment

Essay generator.

Unemployment is a pressing issue that affects individuals, families, and entire nations. It’s a complex problem with far-reaching consequences, making it an important topic for students participating in essay writing competitions. In this essay, we will delve into the various aspects of unemployment, from its definition and causes to its impact on society and potential solutions.

Unemployment

Unemployment refers to the condition in which individuals who are capable of working, actively seeking employment, and willing to work at the prevailing wage rates are unable to secure suitable jobs. It is typically measured as a percentage of the labor force that is without employment.

Types of Unemployment

• Structural Unemployment : This type of unemployment arises due to a mismatch between the skills and qualifications of job seekers and the available job opportunities. Changes in technology, shifts in the economy, or changes in demand for certain skills can lead to structural unemployment.
• Frictional Unemployment : Frictional unemployment occurs when individuals are between jobs, voluntarily leaving one job in search of a better one, or entering the workforce for the first time. It is considered a natural and temporary form of unemployment.
• Cyclical Unemployment : This type of unemployment is closely tied to the business cycle. It occurs during economic downturns when demand for goods and services decreases, leading to layoffs and job losses.
• Seasonal Unemployment : Seasonal unemployment is linked to seasonal changes in demand for labor. For example, agricultural workers may be unemployed during the off-season, and retail workers may face layoffs after the holiday rush.
• Long-Term Unemployment : When individuals remain unemployed for an extended period, typically six months or more, it is referred to as long-term unemployment. It can have severe consequences for individuals and the economy.

Causes of Unemployment

• Economic Fluctuations : Economic recessions and depressions can result in widespread job losses, leading to increased unemployment rates.
• Technological Advancements : Automation and advancements in technology can lead to job displacement in certain industries, contributing to structural unemployment.
• Globalization : Increased globalization can lead to outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, affecting employment opportunities in some sectors.
• Mismatched Skills : Rapid changes in the job market can create a skills gap, leaving some workers with outdated skills that do not match current job requirements.
• Labor Market Rigidities : Factors such as minimum wage laws, labor union negotiations, and stringent employment regulations can influence the level of unemployment.

Effects of Unemployment

• Financial Stress : Unemployed individuals and their families often face financial difficulties, struggling to meet basic needs and cover expenses.
• Mental Health Issues : Prolonged unemployment can lead to anxiety, depression, and stress due to the uncertainty and loss of self-esteem associated with joblessness.
• Social Consequences : Unemployment can strain relationships, lead to social isolation, and even contribute to increased crime rates in some communities.
• Economic Impact : High levels of unemployment can lead to reduced consumer spending, decreased economic growth, and increased government spending on social welfare programs.
• Skill Erosion : Prolonged unemployment can result in skill erosion, making it harder for individuals to re-enter the workforce.

Solutions to Unemployment

• Education and Training : Encouraging lifelong learning and providing training programs that align with current job market demands can help individuals acquire the skills they need to find employment.
• Government Policies : Implementing policies that promote job creation, such as infrastructure projects, tax incentives for businesses, and job training programs, can stimulate employment.
• Support for Small Businesses : Supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can help create jobs and boost local economies.
• Labor Market Flexibility : Ensuring flexibility in labor markets, such as reducing strict employment regulations, can make it easier for businesses to hire and adapt to changing economic conditions.
• Investment in Innovation : Encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship can lead to the creation of new industries and job opportunities.
• Social Safety Nets : Expanding and improving social safety nets, such as unemployment benefits and job placement services, can provide a safety cushion for individuals during periods of unemployment.
• Promoting Entrepreneurship : Encouraging individuals to start their own businesses can help create jobs and reduce dependence on traditional employment.

In conclusion, Unemployment is a multifaceted issue with profound consequences for individuals and society as a whole. Understanding its various types, causes, and effects is essential for addressing the problem effectively. By implementing policies and strategies that promote job creation, support education and training, and provide social safety nets, we can work towards reducing unemployment rates and fostering a more prosperous and stable society. Students participating in essay writing competitions have the opportunity to explore this important topic and contribute to the ongoing dialogue on unemployment and its solutions.

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Unemployment Essay

500+ words essay on unemployment.

Unemployment is a serious problem among young people. There are thousands of people who do not have any work to do and cannot find work for themselves. Unemployment refers to the situation where a person wants to work but cannot find employment in the labour market. One of the major reasons that contribute to unemployment is the large population of India and the limited availability of resources. In this essay on unemployment, we will discuss all these issues responsible for unemployment in India and how we can overcome this problem. Students must go through this unemployment essay to get ideas on how to write an effective essay on the topic related to unemployment. Also, they can practice more CBSE essays on different topics to boost their writing skills.

Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate, defined as the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force. The unemployment rate for the year 2013-14 in rural India was 4.7%, whereas it was 5.5% for urban India. In the short term, unemployment significantly reduces a person’s income and, in the long term, it reduces their ability to save for retirement and other goals. Unemployment is a loss of valuable productive resources to the economy. The impact of job loss in rural and regional areas flows through the local community, damaging businesses.

Reason for Unemployment

An unemployed person is one who is an active member of the labour force and is seeking work but is unable to find any work for himself. There are multiple reasons behind the unemployment of a person. One of them is the slow economic growth, due to which jobs in adequate numbers are not created. Excessive dependence on agriculture and slow growth of non-farm activities also limit employment generation. Unemployment in urban areas is mainly the result of substantial rural migration to urban areas. This has also resulted in a labour workforce in cities. The lack of technology and proper machinery has also contributed to unemployment.

The present educational system is based on theoretical knowledge instead of practical work. Thus, it lacks the development of aptitude and technical qualifications required for various types of work among job seekers. This has created a mismatch between the need and availability of relevant skills and training. This results in unemployment, especially among the youth and educated people with high degrees and qualifications. Apart from it, the lack of investment and infrastructure has led to inadequate employment opportunities in different sectors.

Steps to Eliminate Unemployment

Various strategies and proposals have been implemented to generate employment. Many Employment programmes and policies have been introduced and undertaken to boost self-employment and help unemployed people engage in public works. The Government of India has taken several policy measures to fight the problem of unemployment. Some of the measures are the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), National Skill Development Mission, Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY), Regional Rural Banks (RRBs).

Despite the measures taken by the government, India remains a country experiencing severe unemployment problems. It can be resolved by imparting education in such a way that youth get the necessary skills so as to get employment easily. Setting up various vocational training and vocational courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students will help in finding employment for youth. The government needs to emphasise these courses at the primary level and make them a compulsory part of the curriculum to make students proficient in their early stages of life. Career counselling should be provided within schools and colleges so that students can choose a better career option based on their interests and ability. Government should create more job opportunities for the youth and graduates.

India is a fast-growing economy. There is an enormous scope for improvement in the unemployment sector. The various measures and steps taken by the government to increase the employment rate have succeeded to a great extent. The widespread skill development programmes have gained popularity across the nation. With better enforcement of the strategies, the employment level can be significantly improved. Although, we have to go a long way before we can say that all the people in India will get employment.

We hope this essay on unemployment must have helped students in boosting their essay-writing skills. Keep learning and visiting the BYJU’S website for more study material.

Frequently Asked Questions on Unemployment Essay

Is unemployment still an existing problem in india.

Yes, unemployment is still a serious issue in our country. Steps need to be taken by the government and also by the youngsters in India to improve this situation.

Is it necessary for schoolchildren to be informed about unemployment?

Students at this young age should definitely be informed about this topic as it will motivate them to study and aim for higher scores in exams.

What points are to be added to an essay topic on Unemployment?

Add details about different age groups of people suffering from this state of employment. You can focus on the fact that poverty is an indirect reason for unemployment and vice-versa. Then, suggest steps that can be taken to bring about an improvement in education and increase the percentage of literacy.

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Unemployment

A term referring to individuals who are employable and seeking a job but are unable to find a job

What is Unemployment?

Unemployment is a term referring to individuals who are employable and actively seeking a job but are unable to find a job. Included in this group are those people in the workforce who are working but do not have an appropriate job. Usually measured by the unemployment rate, which is dividing the number of unemployed people by the total number of people in the workforce, unemployment serves as one of the indicators of a country’s economic status.

Understanding Unemployment

The term “unemployment” is often misunderstood, it as it includes people who are waiting to return to a job after being discharged, yet it does not include individuals who have stopped looking for work in the past four weeks due to various reasons such as leaving work to pursue higher education, retirement , disability, and personal issues. Also people who are not actively seeking a job but do want to work are not classified as unemployed.

Interestingly, people who have not looked for a job in the past four weeks but have been actively seeking one in the last 12 months are put into a category called the “marginally attached to the labor force.” Within this category is another category called “discouraged workers,” which refers to people who have given up looking for a job.

The categories mentioned above sometimes cause confusion and debate as to whether the unemployment rate fully represents the actual number of people who are unemployed. For a full understanding, one should juxtapose “unemployment” with the term “employment,” which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) describes as individuals aged 16 and above who have recently put hours into work in the past week, paid or otherwise, because of self-employment.

Types of Unemployment

There are basically four types of unemployment: (1) demand deficient, (2) frictional, (3) structural, and (4) voluntary unemployment.

1. Demand deficient unemployment

Demand deficit unemployment is the biggest cause of unemployment that typically happens during a recession. When companies experience a reduction in the demand for their products or services, they respond by cutting back on their production, making it necessary to reduce their workforce within the organization. In effect, workers are laid off.

2. Frictional unemployment

Frictional unemployment refers to those workers who are in between jobs. An example is a worker who recently quit or was fired and is looking for a job in an economy that is not experiencing a recession. It is not an unhealthy thing because it is usually caused by workers trying to find a job that is most suitable for their skills.

3. Structural unemployment

Structural unemployment happens when the skills set of a worker does not match the skills demanded by the jobs available, or alternatively when workers are available but are unable to reach the geographical location of the jobs.

An example is a teaching job that requires relocation to China, but the worker cannot secure a work visa due to certain visa restrictions. It can also happen when there is a technological change in the organization, such as workflow automation that displaces the need for human labor.

4. Voluntary unemployment

Voluntary unemployment happens when a worker decides to leave a job because it is no longer financially compelling. An example is a worker whose take-home pay is less than his or her cost of living.

Causes of Unemployment

Unemployment is caused by various reasons that come from both the demand side, or employer, and the supply side, or the worker.

Demand-side reductions may be caused by high interest rates, global recession, and financial crisis. From the supply side, frictional unemployment and structural employment play a great role.

The impact of unemployment can be felt by both the workers and the national economy and can cause a ripple effect.

Unemployment causes workers to suffer financial hardship that impacts families, relationships, and communities. When it happens, consumer spending, which is one of an economy’s key drivers of growth, goes down, leading to a recession or even a depression when left unaddressed.

Unemployment results in reduced demand, consumption, and buying power, which in turn causes lower profits for businesses and leads to budget cuts and workforce reductions. It creates a cycle that goes on and on that is difficult to reverse without some type of intervention.

Long-term Unemployment vs. Short-term Unemployment

Unemployment that lasts longer than 27 weeks even if the individual has sought employment in the last four weeks is called long-term unemployment. Its effects are far worse than short-term unemployment for obvious reasons, and the following are noted as some of its effects.

• Some 56% of the long-term unemployed reported a significant decrease in their net worth.
• Financial problems are not the only effects of long-term unemployment as 46% of those in such a state reported experiencing strained family relationships. The figure is relatively higher than the 39% percent who weren’t unemployed for as long.
• Another 43% of the long-term unemployed reported a significant effect on their ability to achieve their career goals.
• Sadly, long-term unemployment led to 38% of these individuals losing their self-respect and 24% seeking professional help.

Unemployment is a serious social and economic issue that results in a tremendous impact on everything but is often overlooked. A stronger system of assessing unemployment should be put in place in order to determine its causes and how to address it better.

Additional Resources

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Employment and Unemployment

Introduction

Definitions and basics.

Unemployment , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Each month, the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics randomly surveys sixty thousand individuals around the nation. If respondents say they are both out of work and seeking employment, they are counted as unemployed members of the labor force. Jobless respondents who have chosen not to continue looking for work are considered out of the labor force and therefore are not counted as unemployed….

Full Employment: : Business Cycles , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Just as there is no regularity in the timing of business cycles, there is no reason why cycles have to occur at all. The prevailing view among economists is that there is a level of economic activity, often referred to as full employment, at which the economy theoretically could stay forever. Full employment refers to a level of production at which all the inputs to the production process are being used, but not so intensively that they wear out, break down, or insist on higher wages and more vacations. If nothing disturbs the economy, the full-employment level of output, which naturally tends to grow as the population increases and new technologies are discovered, can be maintained forever. There is no reason why a time of full employment has to give way to either a full-fledged boom or a recession….

Unemployment Insurance , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

The United States unemployment insurance program is intended to offset income lost by workers who lose their jobs as a result of employer cutbacks. The program, launched by the Social Security Act of 1935, is the government’s single most important source of assistance to the jobless. A second goal of the program is to counter the negative impacts on the national economy, and especially on local economies, of major layoffs, seasonal cutbacks, or a recession. Unemployment benefits help sustain the level of income and hence the demand for goods and services in areas hard hit by unemployment. In short, unemployment insurance supports consumer buying power….

Welfare , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

… in 1996, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which replaced AFDC with TANF. Under the new program, the federal government eliminated the entitlement to cash welfare, placed limits on the length of time families could collect benefits, and introduced work requirements. By law, a family cannot receive TANF benefits for more than a lifetime limit of five years, cumulative across welfare spells. Regarding work requirements, TANF mandated that at least 50 percent of recipients participate in “work” activities by 2002, with activities including employment, on-the-job training, vocational EDUCATION, job search, and community service….

New Keynesian Economics , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

The primary disagreement between new classical and new Keynesian economists is over how quickly wages and prices adjust. New classical economists build their macroeconomic theories on the assumption that wages and prices are flexible. They believe that prices “clear” markets–balance supply and demand–by adjusting quickly. New Keynesian economists, however, believe that market-clearing models cannot explain short-run economic fluctuations, and so they advocate models with “sticky” wages and prices. New Keynesian theories rely on this stickiness of wages and prices to explain why involuntary unemployment exists and why monetary policy has such a strong influence on economic activity….

Labor Unions , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Many unions have won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. In doing so, however, they have reduced the number of jobs available….

In the News and Examples

Russ Roberts on the Least Pleasant Jobs . Podcast on EconTalk, April 21, 2008.

EconTalk host Russ Roberts talks about the claim that for capitalism to succeed there have to be people at the bottom to do the unpleasant tasks and that the rich thrive because of the suffering of those at the bottom. He critiques the idea that capitalism is a zero sum game where to get ahead, someone has to fall back. He also looks at the evolution of the least pleasant jobs over time and how technology interacts with rising productivity to make the least pleasant jobs more pleasant….

The Broken Window Fallacy , a LearnLiberty video.

Do natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and wars, create jobs? Prof. Art Carden answers this question, along with many others, in this video.

What’s behind the slow U.S. economic recovery from the recent recession? Mulligan on Redistribution, Unemployment, and the Labor Market . Podcast on EconTalk, December 3, 2012.

Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago and the author of The Redistribution Recession, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in the book. Mulligan argues that increases in the benefits available to unemployed workers explains the depth of the Great Recession that began in 2007 and the slowness of the recovery particularly in the labor market. Mulligan argues that other macroeconomic explanations ignore the microeconomic incentives facing workers and employers.

Bhide on Outsourcing, Uncertainty, and the Venturesome Economy . Podcast at EconTalk.

Amar Bhidé, of Columbia University and author of The Venturesome Economy, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in a global economy. Bhidé argues that the worries about outsourcing and America’s alleged declining leadership in technology are misplaced. He argues that the source of prosperity is not technology per se but the application of technology to actual products that improve our lives and that the American venture system and labor market are very effective at the application of technology. The end of the conversation turns to the role of uncertainty in both venture capital and entrepreneurship but also to the role of financial institutions and financial innovation.

Ed Leamer on Outsourcing and Globalization . Podcast on EconTalk, July 09, 2007.

Is outsourcing good for America? How does foreign competition affect wages in the United States? Ed Leamer, professor of economics at UCLA, talks about the effects of outsourcing on wages, jobs, and the U.S. standard of living….

Minimum Wages , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Minimum wage laws set legal minimums for the hourly wages paid to certain groups of workers. In the United States, amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act have increased the federal minimum wage from $.25 per hour in 1938 to $5.15 in 1997. Minimum wage laws were invented in Australia and New Zealand with the purpose of guaranteeing a minimum standard of living for unskilled workers. Most noneconomists believe that minimum wage laws protect workers from exploitation by employers and reduce poverty. Most economists believe that minimum wage laws cause unnecessary hardship for the very people they are supposed to help….

Wages and Working Conditions , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

CEOs of multinational corporations, exotic dancers, and children with lemonade stands have at least one thing in common. They all expect a return for their effort. Most workers get that return in a subtle and ever-changing combination of money wages and working conditions. This article describes how they changed for the typical U.S. worker during the twentieth century…. Surely the single most fundamental working condition is the chance of death on the job. In every society workers are killed or injured in the process of production. While occupational deaths are comparatively rare overall in the United States today, they still occur with some regularity in ocean fishing, the construction of giant bridges and skyscrapers, and a few other activities.

A Little History: Primary Sources and References

Great Depression , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

A worldwide depression struck countries with market economies at the end of the 1920s. Although the Great Depression was relatively mild in some countries, it was severe in others, particularly in the United States, where, at its nadir in 1933, 25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers were completely out of work. Some people starved; many others lost their farms and homes…. By June 1937, the recovery–during which the unemployment rate had fallen to 12 percent–was over. Two policies, labor cost increases and a contractionary monetary policy, caused the economy to contract further. Although the contraction ended around June 1938, the ensuing recovery was quite slow. The average rate of unemployment for all of 1938 was 19.1 percent, compared with an average unemployment rate for all of 1937 of 14.3 percent. Even in 1940, the unemployment rate still averaged 14.6 percent.

Phillips Curve , from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

The Phillips curve represents the relationship between the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate…. At the height of the Phillips curve’s popularity as a guide to policy, Edmund Phelps and Milton Friedman independently challenged its theoretical underpinnings. They argued that well-informed, rational employers and workers would pay attention only to real wages–the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of money wages. In their view, real wages would adjust to make the supply of labor equal to the demand for labor, and the unemployment rate would then stand at a level uniquely associated with that real wage–the “natural rate” of unemployment….

John Maynard Keynes , biography from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Keynes’s ideas took a dramatic change, however, as unemployment in Britain dragged on during the interwar period, reaching levels as high as 20 percent. Keynes investigated other causes of Britain’s economic woes, and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was the result….

Advanced Resources

Related topics.

Productive Resources Business Cycles Inflation Roles of Government Insurance Price Controls, Price Ceilings, and Price Floors

Report | Wages, Incomes, and Wealth

Education is Not the Cure for High Unemployment or for Income Inequality

Report • By Lawrence Mishel • January 12, 2011

Briefing Paper #286

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With signs pointing to persistent high unemployment and a recovery even weaker than those of the early 1990s and 2000s, it is becoming common to hear in the media and among some policy makers the claim that lingering unemployment is not cyclical but “structural.” In this story, the jobs problem is not a lack of demand for workers but rather a mismatch between workers’ skills and employers’ needs. Another version of the skills mismatch is also being told about the future: we face an impending skills shortage, particularly a shortfall of college graduates, after the economy returns to full employment.

The common aspect of each of these claims about structural problems is that education is the solution, the only solution. In other words, delivering the appropriate education and training to workers becomes the primary if not sole policy challenge if we hope to restore full employment in the short and medium term and if we expect to prevent a (further) loss of competitiveness and a further rise in wage and income inequality in the longer term.

There are ample reasons to be skeptical of both claims:

• The number of job openings in the current recession has been far too few to accommodate those looking for work, and the shortfall in job openings is pervasive across sectors, not just the hard-hit construction industry, which tends to be the focus of skills-mismatch claims.
• There is no one education group—particularly not the least educated, as the structural argument would suggest—fueling the rise of long-term unemployment in this recession. If there has been some transformation of the workplace leaving millions of workers inadequate for the currently available jobs, then it was not based on a major educational upscaling of jobs.
• The challenge the nation faces as high unemployment persists is not better education and training for those currently unemployed. The problem is a lack of jobs.
• The huge increase in wage and income inequality experienced over the last 30 years is not a reflection of a shortfall in the skills and education of the workforce. Rather, workers face a wage deficit, not a skills deficit. It is hard to find some ever-increasing need for college graduates that is going unmet: college graduates have not seen their real wage rise in 10 years, and the pay gap with high school graduates has not increased in that time period. Moreover, even before the recession college students and graduates were working as free interns, a phenomenon we would not observe if college graduates were in such demand.

In the following I do not present definitive evidence, but I hope to be persuasive enough for readers to demand more evidence before accepting either of these claims of immediate structural employment problems or long-term skills deficits. The first section draws heavily on recent work on structural unemployment in the current recession (see Mishel et al. 2010), and the second draws heavily on the wages chapter of the most recent version of The State of Working America (Mishel et al. 2009).

I. Is current unemployment primarily structural in nature?

The context.

Unemployment has remained at 9.5% or above  since mid-2009 and may remain that high or inch even higher through 2011. The predominant narrative to describe this situation has been that the bursting of the housing and stock bubbles and the financial crisis led to a severe cutback in household consumption and business investment, causing severe job losses. The policy conclusion drawn from this narrative is that we need faster growth to increase the demand for workers and reduce unemployment.

A competing and, in my view, misguided narrative has also been put forth that a large share of current high unemployment is structural, meaning that those who are unemployed are not well suited to the jobs becoming available. This would be, for instance, because their skills are inadequate, have deteriorated, or are not applicable to the industries that are expanding, or because the unemployed simply do not live where the jobs are. Some make claims about structural unemployment because certain aggregate relationships, such as that between job openings and unemployment, do not appear to be following historical patterns, thereby suggesting a possible skills mismatch. Others have postulated that employers have substantially revamped their production processes in this downturn, thereby eliminating the need for many of the types of workers who are currently unemployed. Still others note that the housing bubble led to a bloated construction sector, and many of those jobs will never come back; displaced construction workers must switch to new jobs for which they may not be qualified. The policy implications of a finding that high unemployment is primarily structural are that: (1) it would be foolhardy to use further demand management (fiscal stimulus, either tax cuts or increased spending, or monetary policy) to lower unemployment, and (2) the appropriate policy is to offer education and training to the unemployed to help them make a transition to new occupations and sectors.

Yet there has been little evidence offered to support the claim of extensive structural unemployment, and we find that the pattern of employer behavior regarding job openings, layoffs, and hires does not lend it much credence. This matters quite a bit for guiding policy.

Lest I be accused of critiquing a straw man, note the recent statement of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank president, Narayana Kocherlakota (2010):

What does this change in the relationship between job openings and unemployment connote? In a word, mismatch. Firms have jobs, but can’t find appropriate workers. The workers want to work, but can’t find appropriate jobs. There are many possible sources of mismatch—geography, skills, demography—and they are probably all at work. Whatever the source, though, it is hard to see how the Fed can do much to cure this problem. Monetary stimulus has provided conditions so that manufacturing plants want to hire new workers. But the Fed does not have a means to transform construction workers into manufacturing workers. Of course, the key question is: How much of the current unemployment rate is really due to mismatch, as opposed to conditions that the Fed can readily ameliorate? The answer seems to be a lot. Most of the existing unemployment represents mismatch that is not readily amenable to monetary policy.

The competing explanation, as mentioned above, is the one I find most plausible: the economy is operating far below its potential output because of a shortfall in demand caused by an extreme loss of financial and housing wealth that caused consumption to fall; thus, there are simply not enough jobs to go around. Evidence for this explanation focuses on such indicators as low operating capacity in manufacturing, which was 71.6% in June 2010, down from 79.1% in December 2007. Vacancies in commercial offices (now at 17.4%) are further indication of excess capacity. The bottom line is that total demand in the second quarter of 2010 was still below its pre-recession level. In fact, total output, as measured by gross domestic product, was 1.3% below its pre-recession level. Of course, one would expect demand and output to have grown substantially over the two-and-a-half years since the official start of the recession and the ensuing recovery. The Congressional Budget Office conservatively puts the “output gap,” the difference between potential and actual output, at 6.4% in the second quarter. 1 I think the output gap is larger, probably about 9.0% (derived by multiplying 4.5% excess unemployment by 2, from the usual Okun gap formula).

In my view, the pervasiveness of (1) lost employment and output across sectors and (2) high unemployment across types of workers by state, education, age, and occupation suggests an aggregate or macroeconomic explanation rather than one rooted in a few sectors or locations or because some workers lack skills.

Skepticism appropriate

The claim that current unemployment is primarily structural should require much more evidence than has been offered because common sense would deny such an explanation. The structural unemployment story presumes that millions of workers are now inadequately prepared for available jobs even though they were fruitfully employed just a few months or years ago. The argument raises a few key questions.

Has there been a major shift in productivity or technology investment?

What footprints would lead us to believe that the economy transformed itself from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2010, leaving millions of workers inadequate? Productivity did grow a pretty spectacular 6.3% from early 2009 to early 2010, but that was the extent of productivity growth since the recession started in late 2007. 2 Net investment in business equipment and software in 2009 (the latest data) was actually negative, the first time this occurred since World War II. 3 Thus, the alleged structural transformation of production processes that left 4-5% of the labor force inadequate for the available jobs was clearly not associated with new equipment or new technological processes (requiring software), leaving us doubtful it happened at all.

Have the jobs moved around? 

Is the problem just a need for greater mobility, for the unemployed to move to where jobs are more plentiful? Well, where would they go? There are 11 states with a total adult population of about 17 million where the unemployment rate in June was less than 7.0%. 4 There are not enough jobs in those states to matter much, and if the unemployed moved to those states they would nearly double the labor force there.

Is unemployment unusually high compared to job openings?

The “Beveridge curve” describes the historical relationship between unemployment and job openings, and allows one to predict how high or low the unemployment rate should be given a certain number of job openings. There has been much attention to the mid-July blog post by David Altig (2010a), senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, who used such an analysis to suggest that almost a third of the unemployed, 4.6 million workers, are structurally unemployed. His claim was based solely on a simple analysis of job openings and unemployment since 2000 that encompassed the experiences of just two recessions. Less noticed is that Altig (2010b) retreated from this claim just a month later, following an analysis by Cleveland Federal Reserve economists Murat Tasci and John Lindner (Tasci and Lindner 2010). Those authors,  using data back to 1951, showed that unemployment higher than what the Beveridge curve would suggest is not “anomalous”: rather, it happened in the initial recoveries following the deep recessions in the 1970s and 1980s as well.

Looking for evidence  on the employer side

One of the curious aspects of this developing structural unemployment storyline is how hard it is to find any research tying this hypothesis to actual detailed trends in employment, unemployment, or output data. This section explores patterns on the demand side, such as employer job openings, layoffs, and hiring, to see if they correspond to a structural unemployment story.

The number of job openings

The job seekers ratio, which is the number of unemployed workers per job opening, provides ample evidence of a demand side problem. Simply put, the number of job openings has been far too few to accommodate those looking for work.

As Figure A shows, the ratio of unemployed to job openings surpassed six in the summer of 2009 but has dropped to the low five range more recently (once jobs to conduct the 2010 Census were filled). Even if the unemployed filled every job opening there would still remain many unemployed workers, an indication of too few job openings. 5 The ratio of the unemployed to job openings in recent months has been nearly double that attained at the worst points of the early 2000s recession, a ratio of 2.8, which is not surprising since total job openings in the last half of 2009 were 25% below those in mid-2003.

We can examine this phenomenon further by comparing the cumulative number of job openings in the first 12 months of the last recovery to the first 12 months of this one.

Figure B shows that the cumulative job openings in this recovery’s first year were about 32.0 million, roughly 10.0 million fewer than the cumulative openings in the early 2000s recovery. Recall that the recovery of the early 2000s is known as a “jobless recovery,” as the economy shed an additional 600,000 jobs after the recession had ended. Yet the current recovery has generated far fewer job openings than that pitifully weak recovery.

Job openings by industrial sector. A shortfall in job openings is clear, yet a concentration of this shortfall in a few specific industries such as construction would provide evidence of a structural shift.

Figure C shows the ratio in each sector of the cumulative job openings in the current recovery to those in the early 2000s recovery. This measure shows how far short this recovery’s job openings are relative to those of the earlier recovery for each sector. The shortfall in job openings is pervasive, occurring in every sector (except mining). Recent openings averaged 72% of those in the earlier recovery. Recent construction job openings were indeed just 58% of those in the earlier recovery, but the shortfall in job openings was also severe in labor-intensive service industries such as hospitality, entertainment, and accommodation. Since the trends are pervasive across all sectors, it is time to stop thinking about unemployment and the failure to generate job openings as a circumstance driven by developments in particular sectors.

Table 1 , which shows the job opening data for each sector in both the 2001 and 2007 recoveries, allows an assessment of the scale of the recent openings shortfall by sector. Construction is responsible for 5.7% of the recent shortfall, but that is comparable to that sector’s 5.5% share of employment; in other words, construction has not played any outsized role in the failure for openings to rise as fast now as in the earlier recovery. The shortfall has predominately been driven by private service-sector industries (professional and business services, health, education, entertainment, hospitality, and accommodations), which generated 71% of the openings shortfall despite having just 46% of total employment. In fact, the worst performing industry under this measure was leisure and hospitality, which accounts for 10% of employment but 18% of the job openings shortfall.

The number of job losses

Maybe the issue is that we have been seeing more structural changes within industries or shifts across industries that are leading to more layoffs, thereby impeding growth in overall employment. A look at the cumulative layoffs in this recovery compared to the last recovery, as in Figure D , shows that layoffs are not a piece that fills in any puzzle: the cumulative layoffs in each recovery are totally comparable.

Filling job openings

Last, we examine whether it is harder to fill job openings, an indication that structural challenges such as having workers with the right skills or in the right locations are evident. The data for the private sector, however, show it is easier to hire people now than in the last recovery or earlier in this recession, at least as reflected in the ratio of hires per job opening.

If it is difficult to hire adequately skilled workers it should take longer to fill vacancies, and the ratio of hires to openings should fall. In fact, as Figure E shows, the opposite has occurred: the ratio has been somewhat higher in this recovery (averaging 1.7 hires per job opening) relative to the earlier recovery (1.5 hires per job opening). 6 Moreover, this ratio has increased since the recession started, which means there is no evidence of a growing structural problem. Remember, too, how these data are timed. “Job openings” is the count of available jobs on the last day of the month. “Hires,” on the other hand, is the sum of all hires completed throughout the month. As long as the number of hires is larger than the number of openings, it is taking less than a month to fill those jobs.

Looking for evidence on the employee side

The analysis now turns to an examination of the characteristics of the unemployed, especially the increase in unemployment, to see whether those who are unemployed are not well matched to the available jobs. Since those making the claim that there is severe structural unemployment have not presented any evidence about workers themselves—relying simply on the extent of overall unemployment—it is difficult to identify how to test their claim. However, it seems reasonable to assume that workers who are “inadequate” for current jobs would tend to have less education, be stuck in declining industries, and be older. To gauge whether this is the case the analysis that follows focuses on how the composition of unemployment and long-term unemployment has changed since 2007. That is, the analysis explores who (which type of worker) fueled the rise in unemployment and long-term unemployment.

The construction industry

Much of the intuitive appeal of the structural unemployment claim is that the recession came because of the bursting of the housing bubble and the consequent shrinking of the construction sector. In this view, many unskilled workers who benefited from the expansion of the construction sector have been forced to find new types of work, presumably a difficult transition to make. I will not comment on the notion that construction workers are “unskilled,” which can easily be refuted by an examination of their wages and benefits and the training needed for jobs in this sector: this is plainly a judgment on “skill” set by the fact that workers in this sector do not necessarily need to have a college education or an advanced degree. Rather let us turn to what we know about unemployment in this sector. A minor foray into labor market data suggests that construction does not play the outsized role imagined by the president of the Minnesota Federal Reserve Bank and many other commentators. It is true that construction has lost nearly two million jobs in this downturn, 25% of all private sector jobs lost. But is this what has fueled growing unemployment? The answer is no. In the second quarter of 2010 ( Figure F ) unemployed construction workers made up 12.4 % of the unemployed and 12.5% of the long-term unemployed: this means that unemployed construction workers are not more likely to be long-term unemployed than those displaced from other sectors. Even before the recession, in 2007, unemployed construction workers were 10.6% of all unemployed and 11.0% of the long-term unemployed. This means that the composition of unemployment and long-term unemployment has barely shifted toward construction workers. Just because there was an extreme loss of jobs in construction does not imply that those workers are driving up unemployment. More research is needed to determine what happened to those workers displaced from construction, but it is apparent that many have found jobs in other sectors, and perhaps some of the immigrant workers in this sector have left the country.

The composition of unemployment

Table 2 provides a breakdown of unemployment by education level, based on published BLS data for those ages 25 and over (this group has presumably completed its education). The data are presented for the last quarter of the previous recovery to give an indication of the composition of unemployment before the recession. Data are also presented for the most recent quarter (the second quarter of 2010) and for that same quarter in 2009. This allows us to examine the changes over the entire recession and over the last year, a period where the Beveridge curve analyses are said to suggest a growing mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and those needed for job openings. What is most apparent from Table 2, however, is that the composition of unemployment has remained remarkably stable throughout this period. Workers with less education have higher unemployment rates at every point in the business cycle, but the unemployment rate has more than doubled for every education group over the downturn. Unemployment rose for each education group in the last year except the least-educated—those lacking a high school degree—a finding not very supportive of a recent twist against the least-educated workers.

The second panel presents the composition of unemployment by education level, and the trends do not support any notion of this recession’s higher unemployment being fueled by those with the least education. The share of the unemployed with bachelor’s degrees or more is the same in the most recent quarter as before the recession. Those with some college have seen their share of unemployment bumped up slightly. These two groups make up the upper 61% of the labor force by education, and their share of unemployment has not fallen. One might even imagine that our expectation is that those with more education saw their share decline in a recession. Further analysis along these lines, looking at earlier recessions, would be useful.

Table 3 provides data on the rise in the unemployment rates by demographic group, including by education, for those ages 16 and over. The table also provides information on the long-term unemployment of each group: the share of the labor force that is long-term unemployed (27 weeks or more) and the share of the unemployed of each group that is unemployed long term. Data are presented for two time periods, the last half of both 2007 and 2009. These data are computed from the microdata and therefore are not seasonally adjusted, and so we make comparisons to similar time periods of the year.

Between these two periods the unemployment rate more than doubled, up 4.9 percentage points to 9.5%. As we saw in the previous table, unemployment rose sharply for every education group. With these data we can separately examine those with a bachelor’s degree and those with advanced degrees and see that those with at most a college degrees saw their unemployment rate rise (up 119%) as fast as or faster than those with a high school degree or less. It does appear that older workers saw their unemployment rate rise disproportionately relative to younger workers (those ages 16 to 24), consistent with possible structural unemployment. Along these same lines it is true that the oldest workers had the highest share of long-term unemployed among the unemployed of their group (45.9%).

The biggest strike against the structural unemployment claim is that every education group has a similar share of its unemployment as long-term unemployed. Therefore, it seems that all workers once they are unemployed have a similar probability of being unemployed for at least 27 weeks regardless of their education level. That means that there is no particular education skew fueling the rise of long-term unemployment, just as we saw with overall unemployment in the previous table. If there has been some transformation of the workplace leaving millions of workers inadequate for the currently available jobs, as the structural unemployment claim would venture, then this transformation was definitely not based on a major educational upscaling of jobs, or at least that is what the unemployment data are telling us.

It is also clear that black workers suffer by far the most from long-term unemployment, with 6.7% of the black labor force affected. Blacks have an even larger share of the long-term unemployed than the whole group of those lacking a high school degree, even though the vast majority of the black labor force has a high school degree or further education. This finding, however, sheds no particular insight into the structural unemployment claim.

Conclusion on current structural unemployment

We increasingly hear or read claims that we have a serious structural unemployment problem, even to the extent of claiming that most of the unemployed beyond a normal (full-employment) rate face structural problems in finding work. This argument implies that unemployment difficulties reside in the workers who are unemployed: they either are located in the wrong place or do not have the required skills for the currently available jobs. If this is so, then macroeconomic tools such as fiscal policy (spending or tax cuts) or monetary policy cannot address our unemployment or long-term unemployment situation. But surprisingly, perhaps amazingly, there is no systematic empirical evidence for such assertions. Before policy makers adopt this framework—that much of our unemployment is “structural”—they should require much more evidence than is currently available. This is especially the case because common sense would suggest that the problem faced by the unemployed is a scarcity of job openings, a feature of the labor market facing every group of workers regardless of education, sector, occupation, and location.

II. Is there a looming shortage of college-educated workers?

The second structural issue to examine in the labor market is the claim that the economy faces a looming shortage of college graduates that, if not addressed, will cause flagging competitiveness and further growth in wage and income inequality. A related claim is that the rise in wage inequality over the last 30 years or so can be traced primarily to a technology-driven shift toward a greater need for “more educated” and skilled workers—i.e., college graduates—that was not met by a corresponding increase in the supply of college graduates. This is not necessarily a shortage we face in the next few years, according to some leading economists, but one we will face when the economy returns to full employment.

In response to a question posed by The Economist , “Is America facing an increase in structural unemployment?” MIT economist Daron Acemoglu wrote an article, “Yes, the labour force hasn’t responded to shifting demand for skills” (Acemoglu 2010). He wrote:

U.S. structural unemployment is up. But this is not a recent turn of events. It is the continuation of an ongoing process….U.S. employment and demand for labour have been undergoing profound changes over the last 30 years. While the demand for high skill workers, who can perform complex, often non-production tasks, has increased, manufacturing jobs and other “middling occupations” have been in decline. Also noteworthy is that over the last 10-15 years, many relatively low-skill, low-pay service occupations have been expanding rapidly.

David Autor (2010), another MIT economist and a co-author with Acemoglu of important papers on this topic, recently wrote a paper for the Hamilton Project and the Center for American Progress saying:

Although the U.S. labor market will almost surely rebound from the Great Recession, this paper presents a somewhat disheartening picture of its longer-term evolution. Rising demand for highly educated workers, combined with lagging supply, is contributing to higher levels of earnings inequality. Demand for middle-skill jobs is declining, and consequently, workers that do not obtain postsecondary education face a contracting set of job opportunities.

The policy implications of this impending skills shortage, according to Autor, are that “an increased supply of college graduates should eventually help to drive down the college wage premium and limit the rise in inequality,” and “the United States should foster improvements in K-12 education so that more people will be prepared to go on to higher education.” Moreover, we need “training programs to boost skill levels and earnings opportunities in historically low-skilled service jobs—and more broadly, to offer programs for supporting continual learning, retraining, and mobility for all workers.” In short, the U.S. needs to create many more college graduates and to provide various types of training for those who do not become college graduates.

But the need to vastly boost the total number of college graduates in the future may not be as great as Autor and Acemoglu believe. For instance, the trends in the 2000s indicate that the relative demand for college graduates is growing much more slowly than in prior decades. Plus, the wages for college graduates have been flat for about 10 years and running parallel to those with high school degrees, and they have been growing far more slowly than productivity. The implication of these trends is that a surge of college graduates, whatever the benefits (and there are many), can be expected to drive the college wage down. Wage inequality would diminish, but by pressing college graduate wages down (not just in relative terms), which is not the picture frequently painted of the future.

It is important to note that when we discuss the employment or wages of “college graduates” we refer to those with a four-year degree but no further degree; i.e., we exclude both those with advanced or “professional” degrees and those with associate college degrees or with “some college” but no degree past high school. This definition is important because the trends for the aggregate group of all those with a college degree, including those with advanced degrees, is always far more favorable than trends among those with at most a bachelor’s degree. For instance, in 2009 the unemployment rate among all college graduates was 4.6%, but those with at most a bachelor’s degree had a rate of 5.2% and those with advanced degrees had a rate of 3.4%. There are also very different wage trends among those with only bachelor’s degrees (not so good) and those with advanced degrees (much better). And so it is not surprising that analyses which look at the aggregate college group would recommend a vast increase in the supply of college graduates, but in reality what the trends mean is that we need more people with advanced degrees, not just college degrees. It is important to distinguish these groups so we are clear about the findings and implications.

Remarkably, few people seem to know how the workforce breaks down across these categories, and so we have illustrated them in Table 4 . Note that about 21% of those employed have at most a bachelor’s degree, and another 10% have an advanced degree. Only 6.1% of non-immigrant employed workers lack a high school degree (or do not have a GED). A small group, roughly 10%, have an associate’s college degree, but an even larger group, about 20%, has attended college but has no degree past high school; this group is labeled “some college.”

As we have argued in great detail in The State of Working America (Mishel et al. 2009) and in other studies dating back to 1994 (with my frequent co-author, Jared Bernstein) technological change and unmet needs for skill have had little to do with the growth of wage inequality over the last 30 years. This is not to say that there hasn’t been an increased employer demand for workers with more skills and more education: that has been happening for at least a century. What this means is that the growing need for “education” has been met with a growing supply. For instance, between 1973 and 2007 the share of the workforce with bachelor’s degrees and advanced degrees has doubled, from about 10% of the workforce with a bachelor’s degree and 4.5% with an advanced degree.

Regardless of the pressures or lack of them from the labor market, it would be a very positive thing to give every student who wants to obtain a college education a real chance—resources and the appropriate education in K-12—to attend and complete college, even if this drives down the college wage. One could argue that the issue facing the nation is not so much the need to vastly increase the number of college graduates but to give broader access to the asset of a completed college education. While employer demand is not booming so much that we need to vastly boost college graduation—it will continue to expand at a rate fast enough to satisfy employer needs—it may be the case that moving forward we will have a challenge to generate enough college graduates because we will be exhausting the traditional sources of their supply, the white middle  and upper classes. (That is an avenue of research the author expects to pursue.)

Furthermore, it is still certainly the case that completing college will put a person in a better position in the workplace relative to someone who has less education, at least on average. And there are clear non-economic benefits as well, from enjoying better health to being a more informed citizen. Going to college will not be a guarantee of a certain type of income or even access to certain employer benefits—recent college graduates (not just during the recession) earn less in their mid-twenties than those who graduated in the late 1990s, and they are far less likely to have jobs with employer-provided health insurance (Mishel et al. 2009)—yet recent college graduates are clearly faring better than those who have attained only a high school degree.

Wage inequality: It is about much more than college

Though this paper does not attempt to break down the rise of wage inequality into its various components or to analyze the various causes of rising wage inequality, we would like to offer a few findings that suggest that the movement of the college wage premium—the gap between college and high school wages—is not central to the growth of wage inequality over time.

What is going on at the top

One of the remarkable aspects of the growth of wage and income inequality over the last three decades is the immense growth at the very top of these distributions relative to every other group. This trend has not been explored frequently with the wage distribution because the main sources of data do not allow one to separate out the top 1%. However, research using Social Security wage data that we have been able to update does permit an assessment of wage growth at the very top. Consider the two illustrations in Figure G . The first shows that annual wages for the top 0.1% grew 324% from 1979 to 2006, 20 times faster than the 16% wage growth of the bottom 90% of wage earners. The top 1%, which includes the top 0.1%, had 144% growth in annual wages. The next rung down, those in the 95-99th percentile of wages, saw wage growth of 52%, at least three times faster than wage growth of the bottom 90% but nowhere near the growth of the top 1%.

The second part of Figure G demonstrates the differences another way, detailing the ratio of the wages of the top 0.1% and the top 1% to the wages of the bottom 90%.

What happened at the top is not a trivial matter, as the top 1%’s share of all wages almost doubled from 7.3% to 13.6% over this period, nearly corresponding to the wage share loss of the bottom 90% (an 8.3 percentage-point decline in wage share). Thus, what the bottom 90% lost essentially accrued to the very top.

The stories usually told about changing production techniques and technological change and patterns of demand for skills have little to do with this critically important dimension of the growth of wage inequality.

The productivity–pay gap 

During the postwar period into the 1970s productivity and pay (compensation or wages per hour) grew in tandem, but starting in the late 1970s productivity growth began to far outpace the growth of pay. Between 1979 and 2007 productivity in the nonfarm business sector grew by 73%, while the hourly compensation of production, nonsupervisory workers (over 80% of all employment) rose by about 4%, with all of that growth occurring in the boom period of the late 1990s. If anything, the divergence between pay and productivity has widened in recent years, with the divergence stronger in the last recovery than in any prior recovery back into the 1970s.

Figure H shows the gap between the growth of productivity and that of the hourly compensation of the median college- and high-school-educated worker since 1995. Each variable is indexed to 1995, so the lines show growth relative to their 1995 value. Hourly compensation grew in the late 1990s for each type of worker, though not at the rate at which productivity improved. After the momentum of the wage growth in the 1990s boom faded in the 2002-03 period, there was no growth in pay, though productivity continued to climb (it actually grew somewhat faster than in the late 1990s).

This gap between productivity and pay growth is a fundamental characteristic of the economy, and a key policy challenge is how to reconnect productivity and pay growth. It is hard to see how we can have rising consumption not based on asset bubbles or household debt unless we succeed in restoring wage growth as productivity rises.

That is not our focus here, however. The point for our current purposes is that the pay of college graduates is as disconnected from productivity growth as is the pay of high school graduates. Vastly expanding college enrollment and completion will do nothing to address this problem.

Education wage gaps are just a part of wage inequality

Many media and other discussions of the need for more people to complete college focus on the growth of the college wage premium, that is, the degree to which college graduates earn more than high school graduates. It is frequently assumed, as in the discussion by Autor and Acemoglu above, that the rising college premium accounts for the growth of overall wage inequality. In fact, that is not the case. Most of the growth of wage inequality—the wage gap between a high-wage and low-wage worker—can be explained by increased wage gaps among workers with the same education (e.g., the inequality of wages among college graduates) than by wage gaps between workers of different educations (e.g., the college wage premium). That being the case, then even if greater college enrollment and completion could eliminate the wage gap between college graduates and other workers, much of wage inequality (and the greater extent of wage inequality now versus the past) would still remain, and wage inequality would continue to grow.

In more technical language, there are two dimensions of wage inequality—”between-group” wage differentials, such as those relating to groups defined by their education and experience, and “within-group” wage inequality that occurs among workers of similar education and experience. The growth of within-group inequality can account for roughly 60% of the growth of overall wage inequality since 1973 (see Table 3.21 of The State of Working America ; Mishel et al. 2009). The connection between growing wage gaps among workers with similar education and experience is not easily related to technological change unless interpreted as a reflection of growing economic returns to worker skills (motivation, aptitudes for math, etc.) that are not easily measured (that is, the regressions used to estimate education differentials cannot estimate these kinds of differentials). However, there are no signs that the growth of within-group wage inequality has been fastest in those industries where the use of technology grew the most. It is also unclear why the economic returns for measurable skills (e.g., education) and unmeasured skills (e.g., motivation) should not grow in tandem. In fact, between-group and within-group inequality have not moved together in the various sub-periods since 1973.

The timing of the growth of within-group wage inequality does not easily correspond to the technology story. For instance, consider what happened during the 1995-2000 period associated with a technology-led productivity boom: within-group wage inequality actually declined among women and was essentially flat among men. In the early 1990s, the so-called early stages of the “new economy,” within-group wage inequality grew moderately, whereas it grew rapidly in the low-productivity 1980s. Within-group wage inequality did, however, start growing again as productivity accelerated further after 2000 but still lags far behind the 1980s pace. All in all, changes in within-group wage inequality do not seem to mirror the periods of rapid productivity growth or technological change. Perhaps more important, the extent of within-group wage inequality is not affected at all by the supply-side education and training policies that are usually linked to a claim about a shortage of college graduates—so there is no reason to believe that vastly increasing college enrollment and completion will diminish within-group wage inequality.

The growth of inequalities among college graduates has an important practical interpretation as well. As Richard Freeman of Harvard University has pointed out, the wider variance of earnings among college graduates implies that obtaining a college degree is becoming a riskier investment.

Wage inequality in the 2000s

It is surprising that the story of the education premium driving wage inequality persists in the face of its complete failure to explain wage inequality in the 2000s. Most discussions, like those referred to above, make it seems as if the trends of the 1980s were a juggernaut that continued unabated throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In fact, the demand for college graduates relative to other workers has grown the least in this decade compared to other postwar decades, and the college premium, which has grown substantially since the late 1970s, has not grown much at all in recent years. Finally, the actual real wage of college graduates has not grown in about 10 years. Along these lines it is noteworthy that the jobs obtained by young college graduates in recent years pay less than the jobs obtained by those graduating five and 10 years earlier, both in terms of their wages and in the probability that employers provide health insurance or pension coverage.

Together, these trends suggest that the forthcoming supply of college graduates is meeting the growing demands of employers for such workers. Moreover, these trends suggest that a rapid expansion of the supply of college graduates will cause the wages of college graduates to decline, assuming that the productivity–pay gap continues unabated. We can expect the wages of young college graduates and male college graduates (whose wages are currently in decline) to experience the steepest declines. That may or may not be a desirable outcome, but it is definitely not the outcome that most people would expect given the claims that graduating many more people from college will prevent a rise of inequality or reduce inequality.

A relatively flat line cannot explain a rising line

Table 5 presents two wage ratios, one describing the difference between high-wage and middle-wage workers (the logged wage ratio of the 95th percentile to the median) and the other the difference between the wages earned by college graduates and high school graduates (called the college–high school wage premium). The data in Table 5 show the changes in the last three business cycles (1979-89, 1989-2000, and 2000-07) in terms of both the total change and the annual change (which allows for a better comparison of periods of different length).

In the 1980s the trends in overall wage inequality at the top half of the wage distribution—illustrated by the 95/50 wage ratio—correspond closely to the growth of the college wage premium. In the 1990s business cycle both wages continued to rise, though at a somewhat slower pace. More significant for our discussion, though, is that the college premium in the 1990s no longer was rising as fast or faster than the 95/50 wage ratio: rather, the college premium rose about 70% as fast. This divergence became even stronger in the 2000s, when the college wage premium rose hardly at all (up 0.003 log points per year for men) and the 95/50 wage ratio continued to grow strongly among men (the same 0.01 log point pace as in the 1990s) and among women (though at a somewhat slower pace than in the 1990s). It is hard to explain how a trend that became relatively flat—the growth of the college wage premium—is said to be driving fast-growing wage inequality.

The relative demand for college graduates slows down

Table 6 presents estimates of changes in the relative wages, relative supply, and relative demand for college graduates (those with a four-year degree or more and some of those with an education beyond high school) for periods covering the last 90 years (from the work of Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz). These measures show whether college graduates are becoming better paid and more plentiful relative to those without a college degree. Using an assumed value for the elasticity of substitution (i.e., how easy it is to replace a college worker with one who does not have a college degree in the process of producing goods and services) one can calculate, as this table does, trends in relative demand for college graduates. In effect, the more the relative supply or the relative wage of college graduates increases, the more the relative demand for college graduates must have risen (or else the increased relative supply would have led to lower relative wages). Because these measures include those with an advanced degree beyond college along with those with at most a bachelor’s degree, they overstate, in my view, the growth of the relative demand and wages of those with a bachelor’s degree (although one cannot be sure, since some workers with less than a college degree are also included). For purposes of this discussion we will refer to this group as college graduates.

What does the pattern in Table 6 tell us? First, the relative demand for college graduates grew over the entire period (except during the special circumstances of World War II, when wages grew faster for non-college workers), and an expanding relative supply of college graduates occurred throughout this period. In this light we can safely say that employers have demonstrated an increasingly greater need for college graduates over this entire period.

The data in Table 6 are also informative about the last few decades. In the 1970s the wages of college graduates declined relative to other workers in response to a rapid growth in the supply of college graduates that overwhelmed the growing need for them. But their relative wages rapidly recovered and grew in the 1980s. It is this growth of the college wage at a time of rapid growth in overall wage inequality that has focused attention on education/wage gaps and led to technological change as an explanation.

It is critical to note, however, that the trends since 1990, especially in the 2000s, do not fit an explanation of a technologically driven demand for college-educated workers driving up their wages and therefore driving up wage inequality. Note that the relative demand for college graduates grew more slowly in the 1990s than in any previous period since World War II, and that relative demand grew even more slowly in the 2000-05 period than in the 1990s. That is, the rapid growth of the need for college graduates is not a juggernaut launched in the early 1980s that continues to this day: rather, the relative demand for college graduates has been slowing down in each decade since the 1980s and is now growing at a historically slow pace. It is this slow pace of the most recent period that might be the best clue to the future needs for college graduates.

This change in trend would suggest that the argument that we are in a time of historically rapid change in the need for education/skills in the workplace is not accurate, at least if one equates a college degree with skills. In fact, during the entire period since 1980 the relative demand for college graduates grew no faster than during the prior 30 years. So, given that wage inequality grew faster in recent decades than in earlier decades when technologically driven demands for college graduates were at least as rapid, it is difficult to say that a more rapid rise in technological change drove up wage inequality in recent years. That is, there was not an acceleration of a technologically driven demand for college graduates that can explain why wage inequality rose in the last three decades but did not in the prior three decades.

The fact that skill-biased technological change has not been more rapid in recent years, as evidenced by the measured growth in relative demand for college graduates, is even clearer when one digs a bit deeper into the measures used in Table 6. The measure of relative demand, as explained earlier, is deduced from changes in relative supply and the growth in relative wages. It is more accurate to say that this measure of relative demand captures all non-supply factors that influence relative wages, including all institutional changes (minimum wage, unionization, norms, etc.) and all changes in relative demand (arising from technological change but also globalization, shifts in consumer demand toward services, and so on). In this light, technical change is just one component driving the measured “relative demand” for college graduates presented in Table 6. Given that other factors have been more important in the last few decades, including institutional ones, such as the lowering of the minimum wage and deunionization (which raise the relative wage of college graduates by lowering the wages of those without a college degree), and globalization, it seems certain that technical change was playing a smaller role in the last few decades than in the pre-1980 period.

Last, note that the growth of the college wage premium in the 2000-05 period was the slowest of any period, other than when the premium actually declined in the 1970s (due to the rapid expansion of college graduates) and during World War II. This measure, however, includes those with advanced degrees beyond college (and some who have less than a four-year college degree), so it may actually be overstating the growth in the college premium in recent years.

The wage growth of college graduates in the 2000s

We have already seen in Figure H that the real hourly compensation (wages and benefits) of both college graduates and high school graduates failed to grow in the recovery of the prior business cycle. Figure I shows the trends of the median weekly earnings of college graduates (those with just a bachelor’s degree) and high school graduates since 2000. These data are drawn from the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage series for those ages 25 and over. As the data show, the median college graduate was earning the same weekly pay in 2009 as in 2000. This stagnation of wages for college graduates preceded the current Great Recession.

The wage trends are even more disappointing when one examines recent college graduates, a group one might imagine includes the best technologically prepared group of college graduates. In updating State of Working America analyses we have found that young college graduates (defined as those ages 23-29) were earning lower wages than those who graduated ahead of them. For instance, between 2000 and 2007 the wages of young college graduates fell 2.5% among men and 1.6% among women. The wages fell a bit more during the recession years from 2007 to 2009.

Health insurance coverage has fallen among young college graduates in recent years, from 70.6% covered in 2000 to 65.7% in 2007. Pension coverage among young college graduates fell from 54.6% in 2000 to 46.6% in 2007. This sharp reduction in both health and pension benefits for young college graduates over the last few years indicates a substantial job quality problem even for those with the highest educational attainment.

It is also noteworthy that weekly wages have fallen about $40 for the median male full-time college graduate between the first half of 2000 and the comparable period in 2010.

Will a large expansion of college graduates lead to reduced wages and benefits?

The most recent trends, those in the prior business cycle plus those in the current downturn, indicate that the demand for college graduates is growing at a historically slow rate and that the wages of college graduates have been stagnant. The earlier discussion of structural unemployment in the recession showed that unemployment has affected college graduates a great deal and that the college graduate share of unemployment and long-term unemployment has remained at pre-recession levels. These data provide some confirmation that the recession is not introducing a major shift favorable to college graduates. In this environment we have seen that the wages and benefits of young college graduates have deteriorated relative to those of their older siblings who graduated ahead of them. My conjecture would be that these demand conditions can be expected to prevail in the future and that any major expansion of the supply of college graduates (beyond the pace of expansion in recent years) would necessarily lead to steady decline in college wages and benefits, with the wages and benefits of recent college graduates and male college graduates suffering the most. This would definitely lead to less wage inequality, as the wage gap between college and high school graduates would shrink. This, however, is hardly anyone’s favored recipe for shared prosperity.

It would be useful to work through all the expected employment shifts to determine whether there are any trends that might lead to a surge in the need for college graduates, though none come to mind. Some trends suggest a potential slowing of the growing demand for college graduates, such as an expected shrinkage of the financial sector and pressure on the federal and state and local governments to curtail employment as spending grows more slowly. We know that there is a surge in college enrollment induced by the recession  that may already be providing a major boost to their supply. If so we may have more supply and less demand for college graduates than recent modeling would show.

Finally, let us look at the pay levels and education and skill requirements of the jobs that are projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be created over the next 10 years. These projections do not take account of the trends noted just above. Some analysts examine which occupations are expected to grow at the fastest (and slowest) rates, while others examine which occupations will create the most (or least) absolute number of jobs. Our purpose here is to assess whether the types of jobs that are expected to be created will significantly change the wages that workers earn or significantly raise the quality of work or the skill/education requirements needed to fill tomorrow’s jobs. This exercise requires an analysis of how the composition of jobs will change, i.e., which occupations will expand or contract their share of overall employment.

Table 7 presents such an analysis for the 754 occupations for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides projections from 2006 to 2016 (there is a later BLS  projection than this one, though I doubt it will show different results). Through a shift-share analysis (weighting each occupation’s characteristic, such as wage level, by its share of total employment) we can see what the characteristics of jobs are in 2006 and what they will be in 2016 if the projections are realized.

There are a few drawbacks to this analysis. One is that it does not take into account how the jobs of a particular occupation (one of the 754 we analyze) will change over the next 10 years. (For example, will employers’ education requirements for a loan officer or a parking lot attendant grow?) In other words, the changing “content” of particular jobs is a dimension of future skill requirements not captured by our analysis. Second, we have no point of historical comparison (due to lack of data availability owing to changing occupational definitions) for judging whether growth expected in the future is fast or slow relative to the past.

There are some strengths of the analysis, too. We are able to look at the education and skill requirements of occupations in two ways. One is to look at the educational attainment in each occupation now and assume that such education levels will prevail in the future. The second is to use the education and skill requirements that the BLS assigns to each occupation. So, we have one measure that reflects the workers that employers currently hire into each occupation (the “revealed preference” of employers) and another measure that draws on BLS’ judgment. There is still much to learn from how occupational composition shifts will affect the job and wage structure, especially whether the claim that there will be a jump in the need for college graduates is consistent with these projections.

Table 7 shows that employment will shift to occupations with higher median annual wages, but the effect will be to raise annual wages by 1.1% over 10 years (or about 0.1% per year). This is not a large change compared to the real wage growth that normally occurs each year or to the composition effects evaluated in earlier years (using a different occupation coding system). The analysis also shows that the jobs of the future will require greater education credentials but not to any great extent. In 2006, according to these data, the occupational composition of jobs requires that 27.7% of the workforce have a college degree or more. This share will rise by one percentage point to 28.7% by 2016. The jobs will entail no need to expand the share of the workforce with only some college, a group roughly the same size as the required college-educated workforce. The demand for workers with a high school degree or less will fall slightly, from 43.6% to 42.6% over the 2006-16 period.

Table 7 also provides a detailed assessment of the education or training needed to be employed in an occupation. The results suggest a shift to the occupations that require the most education or training (those requiring a bachelor’s degree or more increase their employment share by less than a percentage point) and, correspondingly, a shift from those occupations that require the least education and training (the bottom three categories lose a 1.1 percentage-point share of employment). Nevertheless, this method of gauging occupational skill requirements yields a lower estimate of the share of jobs requiring a college degree or more, just 21.4% in 2016; the other method, based on actual education in those occupations today, suggests a higher 28.7% of college graduates needed. So, using assessments of skill requirements in each occupation suggests a somewhat smaller growth in skill requirements and growth to a lesser level in 2016.

These projections show that occupational upgrading will continue in the future, as the jobs created will be in occupations with somewhat higher wages and educational and training requirements. This trend has been evident over the last century, and the developments in the future do not appear to be extraordinary in any sense. The need to greatly expand the size of the college-educated workforce cannot be demonstrated by looking at occupational projections. If future workers will need much more education than those currently working, it will only occur if the education requirements in particular occupations rise substantially.

Conclusion on the looming shortage of the college educated

More education and training is necessary to obtain the long-term growth we desire and to provide equal access to job opportunities for the entire population and workforce. This was the case 30 years ago and remains the case today. Individuals deciding whether to pursue more education and training would be wise to enhance their human capital, as it will place them in a better position as wage earners and as citizens.

That being said, the challenge we face with high and persistent unemployment exceeding 9% is not better education and training for those currently unemployed. Rather, we need more jobs. Moreover, the reason we have seen a huge increase in wage and income inequality over the last 30 years is not a shortfall in the skills and education of the workforce. Workers face a “wage deficit” much more than a “skills deficit.”

Moving forward, our primary challenge is not generating a greatly expanded supply of college graduates because otherwise employers will not have a sufficient number available to them. Rather, we need to provide access to further education (i.e., college completion) for the many working class and minority children who are now excluded from it so they can have a full opportunity to compete for the jobs that require such an education. Greatly expanding the pool of college graduates may help to lessen wage and income inequalities, but it will do so by forcing young college graduates to take jobs with lower pay and benefits than earlier cohorts and by pushing downward the average college graduate’s earnings (especially those of men). Those with advanced degrees will continue to see their salaries rise, but that group is only about a tenth of the workforce and even with rapid expansion its share will only rise slowly.

The challenge, in my view, is to provide a much broader path to prosperity, one that encompasses those at every education level. The nation’s productivity has grown a great deal in the last 30 years, up 80% from 1979 to 2009, and such productivity growth or better can be expected in the future. Yet with all the income generated in the past and expected in the future it is difficult to explain why more people have not seen rapid income growth. It is not the economy that has limited or will limit strong income growth, but rather the economic policies pursued and the distribution of economic and political power that are the limiting factors.

Acknowledgements

The first part of the paper draws on joint work by the author and EPI economist Heidi Shierholz and research assistant Kathryn Edwards. The second part draws on many years of work conducted jointly with former EPI economist Jared Bernstein and with Richard Rothstein, an EPI research associate. The paper was originally presented at the Scholars Strategies Network conference, “The Next American Economy: Debating How to Spur Innovation, Growth, and Jobs,” Harvard University, September 30, 2010.

An earlier version of this paper was prepared for the Scholars Strategy Network Conference on “The Future of the American Economy” in September 2010 as “Worrying about the Wrong Things: A Skeptic’s Look at Structural Problems in the Labor Market.”

• Data sources are: Table 7. Capacity Utilization in Manufacturing. Series ; G. 17 Industrial Production and
• Domestic Purchases;  Real Final Sales to Domestic Purchasers, Chained Dollars. Bureau of Economic Analysis; Gross Domestic Product. National Income Product Accounts. Table 1.1.6;. Real Gross Domestic Product, Chained Dollars. Bureau of Economic Analysis; 6. Congressional Budget Office. Table 2.2 Key Assumptions in CBO’s Projections of Potential Output. “The Budget and Economic Outlook 2010-2020.” August 2010.
• Output per hour of nonfarm business sector from “Productivity and Costs”, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Number shown describes growth from first quarter 2009 to first quarter 2010, first quarter 2010 to second quarter 2010, and fourth quarter 2007 to second quarter 2010. See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/prod2.pdf .
• Net investment from NIPA, reflects investment less depreciation.
• “Seasonally Adjusted Statewide Unemployment Rates. Local Area Unemployment Statistics,” Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 11 states are Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota, Wyoming, Kansas, Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Population includes the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older from the “Local Area Unemployment Statistics,” Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• All job opening, layoffs, and hiring data used throughout are seasonally adjusted, total U.S. from the “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey,” Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• The data are for private-sector openings and hires to avoid any impact of temporary Census hiring.

Acemoglu, Daron. 2010. “Is America Facing an Increase in Structural Unemployment? Yes, the Labour Force Hasn’t Responded to Shifting Demand for Skills.” The Economist , July 25. http://www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/guest-contributions/yes_labour_force_hasnt_responded_shifting_demand_skills/print

Altig, David. 2010a. “A Curious Unemployment Picture Gets More Curious.” Macroblog. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, July 16. http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2010/07/a-curious-unemployment-picture-gets-more-curious.html

Altig, David. 2010b. “Just How Curious Is That Beveridge Curve?” Macroblog Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, August 18. http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2010/08/just-how-curious-is-that-beveridge-curve.html

Autor, David. 2010. “The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market: Implications for Employment and Earnings.” Center for American Progress and The Hamilton Project. http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/5554

Canalog, Victor. 2010. “Reis Quarterly Briefing.” Reis Reports. Speech given on August 11. http://www.reisreports.com/blog/category/reis-quarterly-briefing/

Kocherlakota, Narayana. 2010. “Inside the FOMC.” Speech given at Marquette, Michigan, August 17. http://www.minneapolisfed.org/news_events/pres/speech_display.cfm?id=4525

Mishel, Lawrence, Heidi Shierholz, and Kathryn Edwards., 2010. “Reasons for Skepticism About Structural Unemployment” Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute

Mishel, Lawrence, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. 2009. The State of Working America 2008/2009. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Tasci, Murat, and John Linder. 2010. “Has the Beveridge Curve Shifted?” Economic Trends. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, August 10. http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/trends/2010/0810/02labmar.cfm

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12 Great University of California Essay Examples

What’s covered, essay #1: leadership, essay #2: creativity, essay #3: creativity, essay #4: creativity, essay #5: talent, essay #6: talent, essay #7: academic interest, essay #8: academic interest, essay #9: community, essay #10: community, essay #11: community, essay #12: community.

The University of California system is comprised of nine undergraduate universities, and is one of the most prestigious public school systems in the country. The UC schools have their own application system, and students must respond to four of eight personal insight questions in 350 words each. Every UC school you apply to receives the same application and essays, so it’s important that your responses accurately represent your personality and writing abilities. 

In this post, we’ll share some UC essay examples and go over what they did well and where they could improve. We will also point you to free resources you can use to improve your college essays. 

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Read our guide to the UC personal insight questions for more tips on writing strong essays for each of the prompts.

Prompt: Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time. (350 words)

1400 lines of code. 6 weeks. 1 Pizza.

I believe pizza makers are the backbone of society. Without pizza, life as we know it would cease to exist. From a toddler’s birthday party to President Obama’s sporadic campaigning cravings, these 8 slices of pure goodness cleverly seep into every one of our lives; yet, we never talk about it. In a very cheesy way, I find representation in a pizza maker. 

The most perplexing section of physiology is deciphering electrocardiograms. According to our teacher, this was when most students hit their annual trough. We had textbooks and worksheets, but viewing printed rhythms and attempting to recognize them in real-time is about as straining as watching someone eat pizza crust-first. Furthermore, online simulators were vastly over-engineered, featuring complex interfaces foreign to high-school students.

Eventually, I realized the only way to pull myself out of the sauce was by creating my own tools. This was also the first year I took a programming course, so I decided to initiate a little hobbyist experiment by extrapolating knowledge from Computer Science and Physiology to code and share my own Electrocardiogram Simulator. To enhance my program, I went beyond the textbook and classroom by learning directly from Java API – the programmer’s Bible.

The algorithms I wrote not only simulated rhythms in real-time but also actively engaged with the user, allowing my classmates and I to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the curriculum. Little did I know that a small project born out of desperation would eventually become a tool adopted by my teacher to serve hundreds of students in the future.

Like pizza, people will reap the benefits of my app over and over again, and hardly anyone will know its maker. Being a leader doesn’t always mean standing at the front of rallies, giving speeches, and leading organizations. Yes, I have done all three, but this app taught me leaders are also found behind-the-scenes, solving problems in unimaginable ways and fulfilling the hidden, yet crucial niches of the world. 

1400 lines of code, and 6 weeks later, it’s time to order a pizza. 

What the Essay Did Well

This is a great essay because it is both engaging and informative. What exactly does it inform us about? The answer: the personality, work ethic, and achievements of this student (exactly what admissions officers want to hear about).

With regards to personality, the pizza through-line—which notably starts the essay, ends the essay, and carries us through the essay—speaks volumes about this student. They are admittedly “cheesy,” but they appear unabashedly themself. They own their goofiness. That being said, the student’s pizza connections are also fitting and smoothly advance their points—watching someone eat pizza crust-first is straining and pizza is an invention that hardly anyone can identify the maker of. 

While we learn about this student’s fun personality in this essay, we also learn about their work ethic. A student who takes the initiative to solve a problem that no one asked them to solve is the kind of student an admissions officer wants to admit. The phrase “I decided to initiate a little hobbyist experiment” alone tells us that this student is a curious go-getter.

Lastly, this student tells us about their achievements in the last two paragraphs. Not only did they take the initiative to create this program, but it was also successful. On top of that, it’s notable how this student’s accomplishments as a leader defy the traditional expectations people have for leaders. The student’s ability to demonstrate their untraditional leadership path is an achievement in itself that sets the student apart form other applicants.

What Could Be Improved

This is a strong essay as is, but the one way this student could take it above and beyond would be to tell less and show more. To really highlight the student’s writing ability, the essay should  show the reader all the details it’s currently telling us. For example, these sentences primarily tell the reader what happened: “The most perplexing section of physiology is deciphering electrocardiograms. According to our teacher, this was when most students hit their annual trough.” 

Rewriting this sentence to show the reader the student’s impetus for creating their app could look like this: “When my teacher flashed the electrocardiogram on the screen, my once attentive physiology class became a sea of blank stares and furrowed brows.” This sentence still conveys the key details—student’s in the physiology class found electrocardiograms to be the hardest unit of the year—but it does so in a far more descriptive way. Implementing this exercise of rewriting sentences to show what happened throughout the piece would elevate the entire essay.

Prompt: Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side. (350 words)

For the past few years, participating in debate has been one of the foremost expressions of my creativity. Nothing is as electrifying as an Asian parliamentary-style debate. Each team is given only thirty minutes to prepare seven-minute speeches to either support or oppose the assigned motion. Given the immense time pressure, this is where my creativity shines most brightly.

To craft the most impactful and convincing argument, I have to consider the context of the motion, different stakeholders, the goals we want to achieve, the mechanisms to reach those goals, and so much more. I have to frame these arguments effectively and paint a compelling and cohesive world to sway my listeners to my side on both an emotional and logical level. For example, In a debate about the implementation of rice importation in the Philippines, I had to frequently switch between the macro perspective by discussing the broad economic implications of the policy and the micro perspective by painting a picture of the struggles that local rice farmers would experience when forcefully thrust into an increasingly competitive global economy. It’s a tough balancing act.

To add to the challenge, there is an opposing team on the other side of the room hell-bent on disproving everything I say. They generate equally plausible sounding arguments, and my mission is to react on the spot to dispel their viewpoints and build up our team’s case.

When two debate teams, both well-prepared and hungry for victory, face off and try to out-think one another, they clash to form a sixty-minute thunderstorm raining down fierce arguments and rebuttals. They fill up a room with unbelievable energy. After several years of debate, I have developed the capacity to still a room of fury and chaos with nothing but my words and wit.

Debate has been instrumental in shaping me into the person I am today. Because of debate, I have become a quicker and stronger thinker. Lightning quick on my feet, I am ready to thoroughly and passionately defend my beliefs at a moment’s notice.

This prompt is about creativity, though its wording emphasizes how students aren’t required to talk about typically-creative subjects. That said, it might take a bit more work and explanation (even creativity, one could say) to position a logical process as creative. This student’s main strength is the way they convince the reader that debate is creative.

First, they identify how “Asian parliamentary-style debate” differs from other forms of debate, emphasizing how time constraints necessitate the use of creativity. Then, they explain how both the argument’s content (the goals and solutions they outline) and the argument’s composition (the way they frame the argument) must be creatively orchestrated to be convincing. 

To drive home the point that debate is a creative process, this student provides an example of how they structured their argument about rice importation in the Philippines. This essay is successful because, after reading it, an admissions officer has no doubt that this student can combine logic and creativity to think intellectually.

One aspect of this essay that could be improved is the language use. Although there are some creative metaphors like the “sixty-minute thunderstorm raining down fierce arguments”, the essay is lacking the extra oomph and wow-factor that carefully chosen diction provides. In the second paragraph, the student repeats the phrase “I have to” three different times when stronger, more active verbs could have been used.

Essays should always reflect the student’s natural voice and shouldn’t sound like every word came straight out of a thesaurus, but that doesn’t mean they can’t incorporate a bit of colorful language. If this student took the time to go through their essay and ask themself if an overused word could be replaced with a more exciting one, it would make the essay much more interesting to read.

As I open the door to the Makerspace, I am greeted by a sea of cubicle-like machines and I watch eagerly, as one of them completes the final layer of my print.

Much like any scientific experiment, my countless failures in the Makerspace – hours spent designing a print, only to have it disintegrate – were my greatest teachers. I learned, the hard way, what types of shapes and patterns a 3D printer would play nice to. Then, drawing inspiration from the engineering method, I developed a system for myself – start with a solid foundation and add complexity with each iteration – a flourish here, a flying buttress there. 

But it wasn’t until the following summer, vacationing on a beach inundated with plastic, that the “aha” moment struck. In an era where capturing people’s attention in a split-second is everything, what better way to draw awareness to the plastic problem than with quirky 3D-printed products? By the time I had returned home, I had a business case on my hands and a desire to make my impact.

Equipped with vital skills from the advanced math-and-science courses I had taken in sophomore year, I began applying these to my growing business. Using my AP Chemistry analytical laboratory skills, I devised a simple water bath experiment to test the biodegradability claims of 3D-printer filaments from different manufacturers, guaranteeing that my products could serve as both a statement and play their part for our planet. The optimization techniques I had learned in AP Calculus were put to good use, as I determined the most space-efficient packaging for my products, reducing my dependence on unsustainable filler material. Even my designs were tweaked and riffed on to reflect my newfound maturity and keen eye for aesthetics.

My business is still going strong today, raising $1000 to date. I attribute this success to a fateful spark of creative inspiration, which has, and will, continue to inspire me to weave together multiple disciplines to address issues as endemic as the plastic problem. 

This essay begins with a simple, yet highly effective hook. It catches readers’ attention by only giving a hint about the essay’s main topic, and being a standalone paragraph makes it all the more intriguing. 

The next paragraph then begins with a seamless transition that ties back to the Makerspace. The essay goes on to show the writer’s creative side and how it has developed over time. Rather than directly stating “I am most creative when I am working on my business,” the writer tells the story of their creativity while working with 3-D printers and vacationing on the beach. 

It is the “aha” moment that perhaps responds to the prompt best. Here we get to see the writer create a new idea on the spot. The next two paragraphs then show the writer executing on their idea in great detail. Small and specific details, such as applying analytical laboratory skills from AP Chemistry, make the writer’s creativity come to life. 

From start to finish, this essay shows that the key to writing a stellar response to this prompt is to fill your writing with details and vivid imagery. 

The second to last paragraph of this essay focuses a bit too much on how the writer built their business. Though many of these details show the writer’s creativity in action, a few of them could be restated to make the connection to creativity clearer. The last sentences could be rewritten like so: 

Working on my business was where my creativity blossomed. In my workshop, optimization techniques that I learned in AP Calculus became something new — the basis for space-efficient packaging for my products that reduced my dependence on unsustainable filler material…

Profusely sweating after trying on what felt like a thousand different outfits, I collapsed on the floor in exasperation. The heaping pile of clothes on my bed stared me down in disdain; with ten minutes left to spare before the first day of seventh grade, I let go of my screaming thoughts and settled on the very first outfit I tried on: my favorite.

Donning a neon pink dress, that moment marked the first time I chose expression over fear. Being one of the few Asians in my grade, clothing was my source of disguise. I looked to the bold Stacy London of What Not to Wear for daily inspiration, but, in actuality, I dressed to conceal my uniqueness so I wouldn’t be noticed for my race. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I envied the popular girls who hiked their shorts up just a few inches higher than dress code allowed and flaunted Uggs decorated with plastic jewels, a statement that Stacy London would have viewed as heinous and my mother impractical. 

However, entering school that day and the days after, each compliment I received walking down the hallways slowly but surely broke down the armored shield. Morphing into an outlet to amplify my voice and creativity, dressing up soon became what I looked forward to each morning. I was awarded best dressed the year after that during my middle school graduation, a recognition most would scoff at. But, to me, that flimsy paper certificate was a warm embrace telling me that I was valued for my originality and expression. I was valued for my differences. 

Confidence was what I found and is now an essential accessory to every outfit I wear. Taking inspiration from vintage, simplistic silhouettes and Asian styles, I adorn my body’s canvas with a variety of fabrics and vibrant colors, no longer depriving it of the freedom to self expression and cultural exploration. I hope that my future will open new doors for me, closet doors included, at the University of California with opportunities to intertwine creativity with my identity even further.

Colorful language and emotion are conveyed powerfully in this essay, which is one of its key strengths. We can see this in the first paragraph, where the writer communicates that they were feeling searing judgment by using a metaphor: “the heaping pile of clothes on my bed stared me down.” The writer weaves other rich phrases into the essay — for example, “my screaming thoughts” — to show readers their emotions. All of these writing choices are much more moving than plainly stating “I was nervous.”

The essay moves on to tell a story that responds to the prompt in a unique way. While typical responses will be about a very direct example of expressing creativity, e.g. oil painting, this essay has a fittingly creative take on the prompt. The story also allows the writer to avoid a common pitfall — talking more about the means of being creative rather than how those means allow you to express yourself. In other words, make sure to avoid talking about the act of oil painting so much that your essay loses focus on what painting means to you.

The last sentence of the essay is one more part to emulate. “I hope that my future will open new doors for me, closet doors included…” is a well-crafted, flawlessly succinct metaphor that looks to the future while connecting the end of the essay to its beginning. The metaphors are then juxtaposed with a summary of the essay’s main topic: “intertwine creativity with my identity.” 

This essay’s main areas for improvement are grammatical. What Not to Wear should be italicized, “self-expression” should be hyphenated, and the last sentence could use the following tweaks to make it less of a run-on: “I hope that my future will open new doors for me, closet doors included, at the University of California. There, I will have opportunities to intertwine creativity with my identity even further.”

Since identity is the main topic of this essay, it would also be fitting for the writer to go into more depth about it. The immediate takeaways from the essay are that the writer is Asian and interested in fashion — however, more descriptions could be added to these parts. For example, the writer could replace Asian with Laotian-American and change a sentence in the second to last paragraph to “dressing up in everything from bell bottom jeans to oversized flannel shirts soon became what I looked forward to each morning.”

Prompt: What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time? (350 words)

Let’s fast-forward time. Strides were made toward racial equality. Healthcare is accessible to all; however, one issue remains. Our aquatic ecosystems are parched with dead coral from ocean acidification. Climate change has prevailed.

Rewind to the present day.

My activism skills are how I express my concerns for the environment. Whether I play on sandy beaches or rest under forest treetops, nature offers me an escape from the haste of the world. When my body is met by trash in the ocean or my nose is met by harmful pollutants, Earth’s pain becomes my own. 

Substituting coffee grinds as fertilizer, using bamboo straws, starting my sustainable garden, my individual actions needed to reach a larger scale. I often found performative activism to be ineffective when communicating climate concerns. My days of reposting awareness graphics on social media never filled the ambition I had left to put my activism skills to greater use. I decided to share my ecocentric worldview with a coalition of environmentalists and host a climate change rally outside my high school.

Meetings were scheduled where I informed students about the unseen impact they have on the oceans and local habitual communities. My fingers were cramped from all the constant typing and investigating of micro causes of the Pacific Waste Patch, creating reusable flyers, displaying steps people could take from home in reducing their carbon footprint. I aided my fellow environmentalists in translating these flyers into other languages, repeating this process hourly, for five days, up until rally day. 

It was 7:00 AM. The faces of 100 students were shouting, “The climate is changing, why can’t we?” I proudly walked on the dewy grass, grabbing the microphone, repeating those same words. The rally not only taught me efficient methods of communication but it echoed my environmental activism to the masses. The City of Corona would be the first of many cities to see my activism, as more rallies were planned for various parts of SoCal. My once unfulfilled ambition was fueled by my tangible activism, understanding that it takes more than one person to make an environmental impact.

One of the largest strengths of this response is its speed. From the very beginning, we are invited to “fast-forward” and “rewind” with the writer. Then, after we focus ourselves in the present, this writer keeps their quick pace with sentences like “Substituting coffee grounds as fertilizer, using bamboo straws, starting my sustainable garden, my individual actions needed to reach a larger scale.” A common essay-writing blunder is using a predictable structure that loses the attention of the reader, but this unique pacing keeps things interesting.

Another positive of this essay is how their passion for environmental activism shines through. The essay begins by describing the student’s connection to nature (“nature offers me an escape from the haste of the world”), moves into discussing the personal actions they have taken (“substituting coffee grounds as fertilizer”), and then explains the rally the student hosted. While the talent the student is writing about is their ability to inspire others to fight against climate change, establishing the personal affinity towards nature and individual steps they took demonstrate the development of their passion. This makes their talent appear much more significant and unique. 

This essay could be improved by being more specific about what this student’s talent is. There is no sentence that directly states what this student considers to be their talent. Although the essay is still successful at displaying the student’s personality, interests, and ambition, by not explicitly mentioning their talent, they leave it up to the reader’s interpretation.

Depending on how quickly they read the essay or how focused they are, there’s a possibility the reader will miss the key talent the student wanted to convey. Making sure to avoid spoon-feeding the answer to their audience, the student should include a short sentence that lays out what they view as their main talent.

At six, Mama reads me a story for the first time. I listen right up until Peter Pan talks about the stars in the night sky. “What’s the point of stars if they can’t be part of something?” Mama looks at me strangely before closing the book. “Sometimes, looking on is more helpful than actively taking part. Besides, stars listen- like you. You’re a good listener, aren’t you?” I nod. At eleven, my sister confides in me for the first time. She’s always been different, in a way even those ‘mind doctors’ could never understand. I don’t understand either, but I do know that I like my sister. She’s mean to me, but not like people are to her. She tells me how she sees the world, and chokes over her words in a struggle to speak. She trusts me, and that makes me happy. So, I listen. I don’t speak; this isn’t a story where I speak. At sixteen, I find myself involved with an organization that provides education to rural children. Dakshata is the first person I’ve tutored in Hindi. She’s also my favorite. So, when she interrupts me mid-lesson one evening, lips trembling and eyes filling with tears, I decide to put my pen down and listen. I don’t speak; I don’t take part in this story. Later, as I hug the girl, I tell her about the stars and how her mother is among their kind- unable to speak yet forever willing to listen. Dakshata now loves the stars as much as I do. At seventeen, I realize that the first thing that comes to my mind when someone asks me about a skill I possess is my ability to listen. Many don’t see it as a skill, and I wouldn’t ask them to either, but it’s important. When you listen, you see, you need not necessarily understand, but you do comprehend. You empathize on a near-cosmic level with the people around you and learn so much more than you ever thought possible. Everything is a part of something- even the stars with their ears.

The essay as a whole is an excellent example of narrative-based writing. The narrative begins with a captivating hook. The first sentence catches the reader by surprise, since it does not directly respond to the prompt by naming the writer’s greatest talent or skill. Instead, it tells a childhood story which does not seem to be related to a skill at first. This creates intrigue, and the second sentence adds to it by introducing a conflict. It causes readers to wonder why Peter Pan’s stargazing would make a six year old stop listening — hooked into the story, they continue reading.

The writer continues to create a moving narrative by using dialogue. Dialogue allows the writer to show rather than tell , which is a highly effective way to make an essay convey emotion and keep readers’ attention. The writer also shows their story by using language such as “mind doctors” instead of “psychologists” — this immerses readers in the author’s perspective as an 11 year old at the time. 

Two motifs, or recurring themes, tie the essay together: listening and looking at the stars. The last paragraph powerfully concludes the essay by explaining these themes and circling back to the introduction.

Crafting transitions is one area where this essay could be improved. The paragraph after “I nod” begins abruptly, and without any sentence to connect the writer’s dialogue at age six with her experiences at age 11. One way to make the transition smoother would be to begin the paragraph after “I nod” with “I try to be a good listener again at eleven, when my sister confides in me for the first time.”

This essay would also be more impactful if the writer explained what they aspire to do with their ability to listen in the future. While it is most important for your essay to explain how your past experiences have made you who you are in the present, looking towards the future allows admissions readers to imagine the impact you might make after graduation. The writer could do this in the last paragraph of their essay by writing the following: “Many don’t see it as a skill, and I wouldn’t ask them to either, but I find it important — especially as an aspiring social worker.”

Prompt: Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom. (350 words)

I distinctly remember the smile on Perela’s face when she found out her mother would be nursed back to health. I first met Perela and her mother at the Lestonnac Free Clinic in San Bernardino where I volunteered as a Spanish translator. I was in awe of the deep understanding of biology that the medical team employed to discover solutions. Despite having no medical qualifications of my own, I realized that by exercising my abilities to communicate and empathize, I could serve as a source of comfort and encouragement for Perela and her mother. The opportunity to combine my scientific curiosity and passion for caring for people cultivated my interest in a career as a physician.

To further explore this interest, I attended a summer medical program at Georgetown University. I participated in lectures on circulation through the heart, practiced stitches on a chicken leg, and assisted in giving CPR to a dummy in the patient simulation laboratory. Every fact about the human body I learned brought with it ten new questions for me to research. I consistently stayed after each lecture to gain insight about how cells, tissues, and organs all work together to carry out immensely complicated functions. The next year, in my AP Biology class, I was further amazed with the interconnected biological systems as I learned about the relationships between the human body and ecosystems. I discussed with my teacher how environmental changes will impact human health and how we must broaden our perspectives to use medicine to tackle these issues.

By integrating environmental and medical science, we can develop effective solutions to reduce the adverse effects of environmental degradation that Perela’s mother may have faced unintentionally. I want to go into the medical field so I can employ a long-term approach to combat biology’s hidden anomalies with a holistic viewpoint. I look forward to utilizing my undergraduate classes and extracurriculars to prepare for medical school so I can fight for both health care and environmental protection.

This student primarily answers the prompt in their middle paragraph as they describe their experience at a summer medical program as well as their science coursework in high school. This content shows their academic curiosity and rigor, yet the best part of the essay isn’t the student’s response to the prompt. The best part of this essay is the way the student positions their interest in medicine as authentic and unique.

The student appears authentic when they admit that they haven’t always been interested in medical school. Many applicants have wanted to be doctors their whole life, but this student is different. They were just in a medical office to translate and help, then got hooked on the profession and took that interest to the next level by signing up for a summer program.

Additionally, this student positions themself as unique as they describe the specifics of their interest in medicine, emphasizing their concern with the ways medicine and the environment interact. This is also refreshing!

Of course, you should always answer the prompt, but it’s important to remember that you can make room within most prompts to say what you want and show off unique aspects of yourself—just as this student did.

One thing this student should be careful of is namedropping Georgetown for the sake of it. There is no problem in discussing a summer program they attended that furthered their interest in medicine, but there is a problem when the experience is used to build prestige. Admissions officers already know that this student attended a summer program at Georgetown because it’s on their application. The purpose of the essay is to show  why attending the program was a formative moment in their interest.

The essay gets at the  why a bit when it discusses staying after class to learn more about specific topics, but the student could have gone further in depth. Rather than explaining the things the student did during the program, like stitching chicken legs and practicing CPR, they should have continued the emotional reflection from the first paragraph by describing what they thought and felt when they got hands-on medical experience during the program. 

Save describing prestigious accomplishments for your extracurriculars and resume; your essay is meant to demonstrate what made you you.

I love spreadsheets.

It’s weird, I know. But there’s something endlessly fascinating about taking a bunch of raw numbers, whipping and whacking them into different shapes and forms with formulas and equations to reveal hidden truths about the universe. The way I like to think about it is that the universe has an innate burning desire to tell us its stories. The only issue is its inability to talk with us directly. Most human stories are written in simple words and letters, but the tales of the universe are encrypted in numbers and relationships, which require greater effort to decode to even achieve basic comprehension. After all, it took Newton countless experimentation to discover the love story between mass and gravitation.

In middle school, whenever I opened a spreadsheet, I felt like I was part of this big journey towards understanding the universe. It took me a couple of years, but I eventually found out that my interest had a name: Data Science. With this knowledge, I began to read extensively about the field and took online courses in my spare time. I found out that the spreadsheets I had been using was just the tip of the iceberg. As I gained more experience, I started using more powerful tools like R (a statistical programming language) which allowed me to use sophisticated methods like linear regressions and decision trees. It opened my eyes to new ways to understand reality and changed the way I approached the world.

The thing I love most about data science is its versatility. It doesn’t matter if the data at hand is about the airflow on an owl’s wing or the living conditions of communities most crippled by poverty. I am able to utilize data science to dissect and analyze issues in any field. Each new method of analysis yields different stories, with distinct actors, settings, and plots. I’m an avid reader of the stories of the universe, and one day I will help the world by letting the universe write its own narrative.

This is an essay that draws the reader in. The student’s candid nature and openness truly allows us to understand why they are fascinated with spreadsheets themself, which in turn makes the reader appreciate the meaning of this interest in the student’s life. 

First, the student engages readers with their conversational tone, beginning “I love spreadsheets. It’s weird, I know,” followed shortly after by the phrase “whipping and whacking.” Then, they introduce their idea to us, explaining how the universe is trying to tell us something through numbers and saying that Newton discovered “the love story between mass and gravitation,” and we find ourselves clearly following along. They put us right there with them, on their team, also trying to discover the secrets of the universe. It is this bond between the student and the reader that makes the essay so engaging and worth reading.

Because the essay is focused on the big picture, the reader gets a sense of the wide-eyed wonderment this student experiences when they handle and analyze data. The student takes us on the “big journey towards understanding the universe” through the lens of Data Science. Explaining both the tools the student has used, like R and statistical regression, and the ideas the student has explored, like owl’s wings and poverty, demonstrates how this student fits into the micro and macro levels of Data Science. The reader gets a complete picture of how this student could change the world through this essay—something admissions officers always want to see.

The biggest thing that would improve this essay is an anecdote. As it’s written, the essay looks at Data Science from a more theoretical or aspirational perspective. The student explains all that Data Science can enable, but besides for explaining that they started coding with spreadsheets and R, they provide very little personal experience working with Data Science. This is where an anecdote would elevate the essay.

Adding a story about the first data set they examined or an independent project they undertook as a hobby would have elicited more emotion and allowed for the student to showcase their accomplishments and way of thinking. For example, they could delve into the feeling of enlightenment that came from first discovering a pattern in the universe. Or maybe they could describe how analyzing data was the catalyst that led them to reach out to local businesses to help them improve their revenue. 

If you have an impactful and enduring interest, such as this student does, you will have at least one anecdote you could include in your essay. You’ll find that essays with anecdotes are able to work in more emotional reflection that make the essay more memorable and the student more likable.

Prompt: What have you done to make your community a better place? (350 words)

Blinking sweat from my eyes, I raised my chin up to the pullup bar one last time before dropping down, my muscles trembling. But despite my physical exhaustion at the end of the workout, mentally, I felt reinvigorated and stronger than ever.

Minutes later, I sat at my computer, chatting with my friends about our first week in quarantine. After listening to numerous stories concerning boredom and loneliness, it struck me that I could use my passion for fitness to help my friends—I jumped at the chance to do so. 

After scouring the internet for the most effective exercises and fitness techniques, I began hosting Zoom workouts, leading friends, family, and anyone else who wanted to join in several fun exercises each week. I hoped these meetings would uplift anyone struggling during quarantine, whether from loneliness, uncertainty, or loss of routine. I created weekly workout plans, integrating cardio, strength, and flexibility exercises into each. Using what I learned from skating, I incorporated off-ice training exercises into the plans and added stretching routines to each session. 

Although many members were worried that they wouldn’t be able to complete exercises as well as others and hesitated to turn their cameras on, I encouraged them to show themselves on screen, knowing we’d only support one another. After all, the “face-to-face” interactions we had while exercising were what distinguished our workouts from others online; and I hoped that they would lead us to grow closer as a community. 

As we progressed, I saw a new-found eagerness in members to show themselves on camera, enjoying the support of others. Seeing how far we had all come was immensely inspiring: I watched people who couldn’t make it through one circuit finish a whole workout and ask for more; instead of staying silent during meetings, they continually asked for tips and corrections.

Despite the limitations placed on our interactions by computer screens, we found comfort in our collective efforts, the camaraderie between us growing with every workout. For me, it confirmed the strength we find in community and the importance of helping one another through tough times.

This essay accomplishes three main goals: it tells a story of how this student took initiative, it explores the student’s values, and it demonstrates their emotional maturity. We really get a sense of how this student improved their community while also gaining a large amount of insight into what type of person this student is.

With regards to initiative, this student writes about a need they saw in their community and the steps they took to satisfy that need. They describe the extensive thought that went into their decisions as they outline the planning of their classes and their unique decision to incorporate skating techniques in at-home workouts.

Additionally, they explore their values, including human connection. The importance of connection to this student is obvious throughout the essay as they write about their desire “to grow closer as a community.” It is particularly apparent with their final summarizing sentence: “For me, it confirmed the strength we find in community and the importance of helping one another through tough times.”

Lastly, this student positions themself as thoughtful when they recognize the way that embarrassment can get in the way of forming community. They do this through the specific example of feeling embarrassment when turning on one’s camera during a video call—a commonly-felt feeling. This ability to recognize fear of embarrassment as an obstacle to camaraderie shows maturity on the part of this applicant. 

This essay already has really descriptive content, a strong story, and a complete answer to the prompt, however there is room for every essay to improve. In this case, the student could have worked more descriptive word choice and figurative language into their essay to make it more engaging and impressive. You want your college essay to showcase your writing abilities as best as possible, while still sounding like you.

One literary device that would have been useful in this essay is a conceit or an extended metaphor . Essays that utilize conceits tend to begin with a metaphor, allude to the metaphor during the body of the paragraph, and end by circling back to the original metaphor. All together, it makes for a cohesive essay that is easy to follow and gives the reader a satisfying opening and conclusion to the essay.

The idea at the heart of this essay—working out to strengthen a community—would make for a great conceit. By changing the anecdote at the beginning to maybe reflect the lack of strength the student felt when working out alone and sprinkling in words and phrases that allude to strength and exercise during the essay, the last sentence (“For me, it confirmed the strength we find in community and the importance of helping one another through tough times”) would feel like a fulfilling end to the conceit rather than just a clever metaphor thrown in. 

Prompt: What have you done to make your school or your community a better place? (350 words)

The scent of eucalyptus caressed my nose in a gentle breeze. Spring had arrived. Senior class activities were here. As a sophomore, I noticed a difference between athletic and academic seniors at my high school; one received recognition while the other received silence. I wanted to create an event celebrating students academically-committed to four-years, community colleges, trades schools, and military programs. This event was Academic Signing Day.

The leadership label, “Events Coordinator,” felt heavy on my introverted mind. I usually was setting up for rallies and spirit weeks, being overlooked around the exuberant nature of my peers. 

I knew a change of mind was needed; I designed flyers, painted posters, presented powerpoints, created student-led committees, and practiced countless hours for my introductory speech. Each committee would play a vital role on event day: one dedicated to refreshments, another to technology, and one for decorations. The fourth-month planning was a laborious joy, but I was still fearful of being in the spotlight. Being acknowledged by hundreds of people was new to me. 

The day was here. Parents filled the stands of the multi-purpose room. The atmosphere was tense; I could feel the angst building in my throat, worried about the impression I would leave. Applause followed each of the 400 students as they walked to their college table, indicating my time to speak. 

I walked up to the stand, hands clammy, expression tranquil, my words echoing to the audience. I thought my speech would be met by the sounds of crickets; instead, smiles lit up the stands, realizing my voice shone through my actions. I was finally coming out of my shell. The floor was met by confetti as I was met by the sincerity of staff, students, and parents, solidifying the event for years to come. 

Academic students were no longer overshadowed. Their accomplishments were equally recognized to their athletic counterparts. The school culture of athletics over academics was no longer imbalanced. Now, everytime I smell eucalyptus, it is a friendly reminder that on Academic Signing Day, not only were academic students in the spotlight but so was my voice.

This is a good essay because it describes the contribution the student made to their community and the impact that experience had on shaping their personality. Admissions officers get to see what this student is capable of and how they have grown, which is important to demonstrate in your essays. Throughout the essay there is a nice balance between focusing on planning the event and the emotions it elicited from this student, which is summed up in the last sentence: “not only were academic students in the spotlight but so was my voice.”

With prompts like this one (which is essentially a Community Service Essay ) students sometimes take very small contributions to their community and stretch them—oftentimes in a very obvious way. Here, the reader can see the importance of Academic Signing Day to the community and the student, making it feel like a genuine and enjoyable experience for all involved. Including details like the four months of planning the student oversaw, the specific committees they delegated tasks to, and the hundreds of students and parents that attended highlights the skills this student possesses to plan and execute such a large event.

Another positive aspect of this essay is how the student’s emotions are intertwined throughout the essay. We see this student go from being a shy figure in the background to the confident architect of a celebrated community event, all due to their motivation to create Academic Signing Day. The student consistently shows throughout the essay, instead of telling us what happened. One example is when they convey their trepidation to public speaking in this sentence: “I walked up to the stand, hands clammy, expression tranquil, my words echoing to the audience. I thought my speech would be met by the sounds of crickets.”

Employing detailed descriptions of feelings, emotions, fears, and body language all contribute to an essay that reveals so much in subtle ways. Without having to be explicitly told, the reader learns the student is ambitious, organized, a leader, and someone who deeply values academic recognition when they read this essay.

While this essay has many positives, there are a couple of things the student could work on. The first is to pay more attention to grammar. There was one obvious typo where the student wrote “the fourth-month planning was a laborious joy”, but there were also many sentences that felt clunky and disjointed. Each and every essay you submit should put your best foot forward and impress admissions officers with your writing ability, but typos immediately diminish your credibility as a writer and sincerity as an applicant.

It’s important to read through your essay multiple times and consider your specific word choice—does each word serve a purpose, could a sentence be rewritten to be less wordy, etc? However, it’s also important you have at least one other person edit your essay. Had this student given their essay to a fresh set of eyes they might have caught the typo and other areas in need of improvement.

Additionally, this student began and ended the essay with the smell of eucalyptus. Although this makes for an intriguing hook, it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual point of the essay. It’s great to start your essay with an evocative anecdote or figurative language, but it needs to relate to your topic. Rather than wasting words on eucalyptus, a much stronger hook could have been the student nervously walking up to the stage with clammy hands and a lump in their throat. Beginning the essay with a descriptive sentence that puts us directly into the story with the student would draw the reader in and get them excited about the topic at hand.

Prompt: What have you done to make your school or community a better place? (350 words) 

“I wish my parents understood.” Sitting at the lunch table, I listened as my friends aired out every detail of their life that they were too afraid to share with their parents. Sexuality, relationships, dreams; the options were limitless. While I enjoyed playing therapist every 7th period, a nagging sensation that perhaps their parents should understand manifested in me. Yet, my proposal was always met with rolling eyes; “I wish they understood” began every conversation, but nothing was being done beyond wishing on both sides. 

I wanted to help not just my friends but the countless other stories I was told of severed relationships and hidden secrets. Ultimately, my quest for change led me to BFB, a local nonprofit. Participating in their Youth Leadership program, I devised and implemented a plan for opening up the conversation between students and parents with the team I led. We successfully hosted relationship seminars with guest speakers specializing on a range of topics, from inclusive education to parental pressure, and were invited to speak for BFB at various external events with local government by the end of my junior year. Collaborating with mental health organizations and receiving over $1,000 in funding from international companies facilitated our message to spread throughout the community and eventually awarded us with an opportunity to tackle a research project studying mental health among teens during the pandemic with professors from the University at Buffalo and UC Los Angeles. 

While these endeavors collectively facilitated my team to win the competition, the most rewarding part of it all was receiving positive feedback from my community and close friends. “I wish my parents understood” morphed into “I’m glad they tried to understand”. I now lead a separate program under BFB inspired by my previous endeavors, advancing its message even further and leaving a legacy of change and initiative for future high schoolers in the program. As I leave for college, I hope to continue this work at the University of California and foster a diverse community that embraces understanding and growth across cultures and generations.

The essay begins with a strong, human-centered story that paints a picture of what the writer’s community looks like. The first sentence acts as a hook by leaving readers with questions — whose parents are being discussed, and what don’t they understand? With their curiosity now piqued, readers become intrigued enough to move on to the next sentences. The last sentence of the first paragraph and beginning of the second relate to the same topic of stories from friends, making for a highly effective transition.

The writer then does a great job of describing their community impact in specific detail, which is crucial for this prompt. Rather than using vague and overly generalized language, the writer highlights their role in BFB with strong action verbs like “devised” and “implemented.” They also communicate the full scope of their impact with quantifiable metrics like “$1,000 in funding,” all while maintaining a flowing narrative style.

The essay ends by circling back to the reason why the writer got involved in improving their community through BFB, which makes the essay more cohesive and moving. The last sentences connect their current experiences improving community with their future aspirations to do so, both in the wider world and at a UC school. This forward-looking part allows admissions officers to get a sense of what the writer might accomplish as a UC alum/alumna, and is certainly something to emulate.

This essay’s biggest weakness is its organization. Since the second paragraph contains lots of dense information about the writer’s role in BFB, it would benefit from a few sentences that tie it back to the narrative in the first paragraph. For instance, the third sentence of the paragraph could be changed like so: “Participating in their Youth Leadership program, I led my team through devising and implementing a plan to foster student-parent conversations — the ones that my 7th period friends were in need of.”

The last paragraph also has the potential to be reorganized. The sentence with the “I wish my parents understood” quote would be more powerful at the end of the paragraph rather than in the middle. With a short transition added to the beginning, the new conclusion would look like so: “ Through it all, I hope to help ‘I wish my parents understood’ morph into ‘I’m glad they tried to understand’ for my 7th period friends and many more.” 

I drop my toothbrush in the sink as I hear a scream. Rushing outside, I find my mom’s hand painfully wedged in the gap between our outward-opening veranda doors. I quickly open it, freeing her hand as she gasps in relief. 

As she ices her hand, I regard the door like I would a trivia question or math problem – getting to know the facts before I start working on a solution. I find that, surprisingly, there is not a single protrusion to open the door from the outside! 

Perhaps it was the fact that my mom couldn’t drive or that my dad worked long hours, but the crafts store was off-limits; I’ve always ended up having to get resourceful and creative with whatever materials happened to be on hand in order to complete my impromptu STEM projects or garage builds. Used plastic bottles of various shapes and sizes became buildings for a model of a futuristic city. Cylindrical capacitors from an old computer, a few inches in height, became scale-size storage tanks. 

Inspired by these inventive work-arounds and spurred on by my mom’s plight, I procure a Command Strip, a roll of tennis racket grip, and, of course, duct tape. I fashion a rudimentary but effective solution: a pull handle, ensuring she would never find herself stuck again.

A desire to instill others in my community with this same sense of resourcefulness led me to co-found “Repair Workshops” at my school – sessions where we teach students to fix broken objects rather than disposing of them. My hope is that participants will walk away with a renewed sense of purpose to identify problems faced by members of their community (whether that’s their neighbor next door or the planet as a whole) and apply their newfound engineering skills towards solutions.

As I look towards a degree and career in engineering and business, these connections will serve as my grounding point: my reminder that in disciplines growing increasingly quantitative, sometimes the best startup ideas or engineering solutions originate from a desire to to better the lives of people around me.

This essay is a good example of telling a story with an authentic voice. With its down-to-earth tone and short, punchy paragraphs, it stands out as a piece of writing that only the author could have written. That is an effective way for you to write any of your college essays as well.

After readers are hooked by the mention of screaming in the first sentence, the writer immerses the readers in their thinking. This makes the essay flow very naturally — rather than a first paragraph of narrative followed by an unrelated description of STEM projects, the whole essay is a cohesive story that shows how the writer came to improve their community. 

Their take on community also makes the essay stand out. While many responses to this prompt will focus on an amorphous, big-picture concept of community, such as school or humanity, this essay is about a community that the writer has a close connection to — their family. Family is also not the large group of people that most applicants would first attach to the word “community,” but writing about it here is a creative take on the prompt. Though explaining community impact is most important, choosing the most unique community you are a part of is a great way to make your essay stand out.

This essay’s main weakness is that the paragraph about Repair Workshops does not go into enough detail about community impact. The writer should highlight more specific examples of leadership here, since it would allow them to demonstrate how they hope to impact many more communities besides their family. 

After the sentence ending with “fix broken objects rather than disposing of them,” a new part could be added that shows how the writer taught students. For example, the writer could tell the story of how “tin cans became compost bins” as they explained the importance of making the world a better place. 

Then, at the end of the paragraph, the writer could more concretely explain the visions they have to expand the impact of Repair Workshops. A good concluding sentence could start with “I too hope to use engineering skills and resourcefulness to…” Adding this extra context would also make the paragraph transition better to the final paragraph of the essay, which somewhat abruptly begins by mentioning the writer’s previously unmentioned career interests in engineering and business.

Where to Get Feedback on Your UC Essays

Want feedback like this on your University of California essays before you submit? We offer expert essay review by advisors who have helped students get into their dream schools. You can book a review with an expert to receive notes on your topic, grammar, and essay structure to make your essay stand out to admissions officers. In fact, Alexander Oddo , an essay expert on CollegeVine, provided commentary on several of the essays in this post.

Haven’t started writing your essay yet? Advisors on CollegeVine also offer expert college counseling packages . You can purchase a package to get one-on-one guidance on any aspect of the college application process, including brainstorming and writing essays.

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