Full employment is when there is no defiant of unemployment in the economy. This means very individual in the country is engaged in some income-generating occupation. In addition, all the resources in the country are fully utilized to the maximum. Thus, the unskilled and skilled labor forces are employed to exploit the resources efficiently and build the economy of the country. Therefore, full employment means the rate of employment in the economy of the country is zero. Statistics from the Federal Research show that the current rate of unemployment stands at 6%. Thus, this means the country is yet to achieve full employment. Therefore, the country has a long way to go so as to achieve full employment. The rate has to reach a zero percent so that the full employment goal can be achieved (St. Louis Fed., 2014).
The 6% unemployment rate in the country is what largely contributes to the friction unemployment in the country. Frictional employment is the period spent by an individual searching for new employment. This usually occurs when the individual loses their current job or quit altogether in search for another one. Thus, the period a person spends without employment is what constitutes friction unemployment. Sometimes this state is called temporary unemployment. The changes of the economy cycle such as the recession have an impact on the friction unemployment (Daly et al., 2012).
Structural unemployment this is where there is a mismatch between the job available and the number of the unemployed workers. Thus, it is common to find the supply of the labor force is bigger than the demand (Daly et al., 2012). Thus, job available cannot absorb all the unemployed labor. On the other hand, you can find that the job requires specific skills that cannot be found from the unemployed workers hence the job available and skills are not matching. This type of employment is common in the IT sector since the sector is very dynamic it requires the workers in this area to keep updating themselves with the new technology/software in the market (Daly et al., 2012).
Conclusively, the United State is yet to achieve its goal of full employment. This is because there is a gap between the labor supply and the demand. In most cases, there is excess supply of labor than what the current industry can absorb. Additionally, the emerging markets like the IT require additional skills that are not the market hence creating the unemployment in the country (St. Louis Fed., 2014).
References
Daly, M. C., Hobijn, B., Şahin, A., & Valletta, R. G. (2012). A search and matching approach to labor markets: Did the natural rate of unemployment rise?. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3-26.
St. Louis Fed. (2014). Natural Rate of Unemployment (Short-Term) - FRED - St. Louis Fed. Retrieved from http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/NROUST
