Is unemployment inherently bad for an economy? The answer to this question seems obvious--yes--but in economics no question can be answered so simply. There is an old saying in economics that has very few exceptions. It says that for every economic loser there is a winner, and for every economic winner there is a loser. The loser of unemployment is obvious. The people that don't have jobs create a lot of social and economic harm. Exploring these harms and trying to find the good effects of unemployment was the purpose of my research. I did all of my research in Murphy Library, which is an academic library at the library. I had to go through several sources before I found some that would be good for my project. I evaluated my sources based on the credentials of the authors, and relevance to my paper. I was unable to find any source that says that all unemployment is good. I did, however, find some sources that say some unemployment isn't bad, and some is needed.
             To begin understanding the effects of unemployment, one must first understand what unemployment is. In their book, Paul Wonnacott, who received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton, and Ronald Wonacott, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, define economics as "the percentage of the labor force unemployed" (Wonacott and Wonacott 429). They say that the labor force is the number of people over the age of 16 that are not in an institution (like prison) who have either looked for work or worked in the last month. It is notable that this definition excludes many people that are commonly thought of as unemployed. These groups include wealthy people who choose not to work, students that don't want jobs, and most importantly, discouraged workers. The Wonacott brothers say that a discouraged worker is "someone who wants a job but is no longer looking because work is believed to be unavailable" (Wonocott and Wo...