History 479B

Devine

Fall 2012

Jensen, “The Causes and Cures of Unemployment in the Great Depression

1. According to Jensen, what are the three types of unemployment and how do they differ from each other?

2. What is the problem with assuming a “homogeneous labor force” – that workers are “all the same” or “interchangeable”?

3. What was “hard core” unemployment? Why was it so hard for the “hard core” unemployed to find jobs?

4. The author argues that the conventional wisdom that higher unemployment causes lower wages was not true in the 1930s. Instead, real hourly wages held steady or rose. Why was this the case?

5. Why did businessmen persist in paying high wages even in the midst of the crisis of the Great Depression? Why did increasing wages – to an “efficiency wage” – increase profits?

6. How did the “revolution in labor management” (561) change businesses’ hiring practices? How did it also precipitate a rise in “hard core” unemployment?

7. How did “efficiency wages” reduce the number of “shirkers” and increase “stint” rates?

8. Why did younger, older (over 50), uneducated, and unskilled workers find it particularly hard to find jobs in the 1930s?

9. What was the problem with the New Deal’s “supply side remedy” (572) for unemployment (that is, reducing the number of workers in the labor force, reducing the number of hours worked per worker, and raising wages)?

10. What three policies did the New Deal not pursue to combat the Depression? Why were these potential remedies not tried?

11. How did unions contribute to the problem of “hard core” unemployment? Why did they oppose job training programs? How did their policies affect the least privileged workers?

12. Ultimately, how did government policies under Hoover and Roosevelt during the 1930s affect structural or “hard core” unemployment? How did labor practices in the private sector during World War II reduce “hard core” unemployment?