Economics of Macro Issues 7th Edition by Roger LeRoy Miller,Daniel Benjamin

Exercise 6

Imagine that at two different times-late 1933 (when the economy was struggling out of the depths of the Depression) and late 1939 (when the economy was expanding rapidly)-there were a million people on make-work government jobs who were officially classified as "unemployed" In which year (1933 or 1939) were these make-work employees more likely to have been displaced from private-sector jobs and in which were they more likely to have been displaced from the ranks of the unemployed? Explain. How would this distinction factor into your thinking about whether such people should be officially classed as "employed" or "unemployed"?