Text 3 How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930’s when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the over-whelming majority are from multiple earner, relatively affl
A. Innovative programmes using multiple approaches should be set up to reduce the level of unemployment.
B. A compromise should be found between the positions of those who view joblessness an evil greater than economic control and those who hold the opposite view.
C. New statistical indices should be developed to measure the degree to which unemployment and inadequately paid employment cause suffering.
D. Consideration should be given to the ways in which statistics can act as partial causes of the phenomena that they purport to measure.
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