Extended Essays 2021

As of June 2021, the unemployment rate remained at 5.4. With the cyclical unemployment

caused by the economic crisis in 2008 and 2020, the unemployment rate remained at an

average high level. Therefore, it can be judged that from the recovery data of the current

unemployment rate, the monetary policy is not particularly overused. However, the epidemic

is not entirely over, and the current unemployment rate is still declining. Therefore, it is

impossible to determine whether the policy has been overused fully.

Table 5 (United States Department of Labor, 2021): unemployment rate change for 2008

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

2007 4.6 4.5 4.4 4.5

4.4 4.6 4.7 4.6 4.7 4.7 4.7

5.0

2008 5.0 4.9 5.1 5.0

5.4 5.6 5.8 6.1 6.1 6.5 6.8

7.3

2009 7.8 8.3 8.7 9.0

9.4 9.5 9.5 9.6 9.8 10

9.9

9.9

Table 6 (United States Department of Labor, 2021): unemployment rate change for 2020

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

2020 3.5 3.5 4.4 14.8 13.3 11.1 10.2 8.4 7.8 6.9 6.7 6.7

2021 6.3 6.2 6.0 6.1

5.8

5.9

5.4

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Moreover, as shown in Table 7, the total amount of monthly unemployment insurance

benefits in the United States reached a peak of 22.10 billion in July 2020. They then

gradually returned to the previous average level with the steady decline of the role of

monetary policy. Therefore, the monetary policy did help the real economy suffered during

the epidemic, and the total unemployment insurance did not significantly increase or decrease

after implementing the policy. Therefore, from the unemployment rate and unemployment

insurance perspective, the monetary policy has not been overused.

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