Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Post 22

15 Things I've learned


1. Census Bureau conducts a monthly study called the Current Population Survey
2. marginally attached workers are people who once held productive jobs but have given up looking for work
3. frictional unemployment is unemployment attributed to workers moving from one job to another
4. structural unemployment is unemployment that results from changes in technology or in the way the economy is structured
5. aggregate supply is the total amount of goods and services produced throughout the economy.
6. a supply shock is an event that increases the cost of production for all or many firms.
7. To construct the consumer price index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics selects a sample of commonly purchased consumer items, called themarket basket.
8. The worst degree of inflation is called hyperinflation
9. The poverty threshold is the lowest income level that a family needs to maintain a basic standard of living.
10. Poverty thresholds are adjusted annually based on changes in the consumer price index.
11. To measure the amount of inequality in the distribution of income, economists plot a Lorenz Curve.
12. The data used to plot a Lorenz Curve can also be used to compute the Gini index.
13. The heavy corporate downsizing of the late 1980s and early 1990s increased unemployment and resulted in many workers settling for lower-paying jobs.
14. rapid changes in technology have led to a drop in demand for lower-skilled workers.
15. One suggestion for improving income equality is raising the minimum wage.

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