Would our current unemployment rate be higher or lower if we never had the Internet? It was never invented, nobody in the world has it, etc. Weigh the potential pros of no Internet (a more productive work force?; kids who invested their time/energy elsewhere during their formative years; slower spread of information and misinformation) with the cons of no Internet (complete lack of an e-conomy/dot-conomy; access to information is much more difficult, etc.). -Pop
Probably similar, we'd just have a less advanced economy. The Internet, like any technological advance, has created a ton of new jobs and killed others. But wealth, on the individual and national level, can be built faster.
Yeah, it's an impossible question to really answer. There are so many other factors, because the Internet is so pervasive and ubiquitous...how many jobs has it created or impacted. I was about to go out on a limb and say it would make unemployment generally lower under most circumstances. But I'm not sure. That's the kind of question that needs to be analyzed in a labor economist P.H.D. thesis. But I think Minstrel hit the major factors pretty well.
Lower, because all of those fine 18 year old girls would have to go get a job instead of taking 500 bucks to ruin their lives forever. Don't get me wrong, I love me some kickass porn but it should really be illegal. If there needs to be an amendment to the constitution I would be for it as long as everything that had been made up to this point was still accessible. There is enough porn out there for a million spanks for a million years. But as for the question, who really knows? Maybe bad loans wouldn't have spread like wildfire if everyone had to read the newspaper like they used to. I wonder how many people saw an ad on yahoo and thought "damn, I make 12 bucks an hour, I should have a 2500 dollar a month mortgage too"
I voted higher because of several factors that I came up with. 1. Companies post job openings on the internet with a list of skill requirements, etc. 2. Internet includes "email" access. 3. Unemployed people create resumes to have posted on the internet (monster, etc). 4. Relocate to other work sites or states within the same company. Is there an opening? Imagine, how long it would take to know of an opening in another plant without email. 5. Business products are listed on the internet as a form of advertisement. Less products to sell, less employed people without the internet.
