Types of Unemployment

In May, 2023, the Writers Guild of America, the Union representing 11,500 screenwriters across film and television, walked off the job. The strike lasted 148 days. The Screen Actors Guild joined two months later. Together, the two strikes idled around 160,000 entertainment workers across Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Toronto. What looked like a single labour dispute was actually three different unemployment problems happening at once. The strike itself produced cyclical unemployment. Writers, crew, caterers, drivers and stage hands were temporarily out of work because of an industry-wide standstill. Once the contracts were signed, those jobs would come back. They mostly did. Production restarted in late 2023. Underneath the cyclical layer, a deeper structural unemployment problem was forming.