The objective of full employment is to have all of those in the economy who are able and willing to work, finding employment within the Australian economy. The labour force is made up of the employed and unemployed. The government considers that in order to be classified as employed you must be over 15 years of age, in paid employment, either full time part time or casual and working more then 1 hour a week. Those who are unemployed are considered to be individuals over 15 years of age and under 65 who are actively seeking employment of some type.
For the objective of full employment it is impossible to have zero unemployed so the government aims for the economy to be free of cyclical unemployment. Unemployment may result from a number of circumstances being cyclical which is caused by fluctuations in economic activity, seasonal due to the changes of seasons, frictional which is caused by people in between jobs, structural caused by changes in technology, corporate restructure or whose skills are obsolete and hardcore which occurs when people have been long term unemployed.
The most common measure of assessing the success of the government in achieving the objective of full employment is the unemployment rate, which is calculated by dividing the total number of unemployed by the labour force and multiplying it by 100. An alternative measure is the participation rate, which is measured by dividing the labour force by the population of people over the age of 15 and under 65.
There are many limitations to the unemployment statistics as surveying data can never be accurate for several reasons such as:
? Surveying errors ? with such a small sample o ...