Yiuchi WuSection:Li, LiEconomists and policymakers often view unemployment rates as an excellent measure of economic health. I agree that the unemployment rate is a good indicator of the economy, but I also think that we should not focus only on traditional indicators because they do not provide all the information about the economy. Instead, we should consider looking at other indicators such as the inflation rate to get a complete story of our society. First of all, I believe that traditional indicators such as unemployment can accurately predict the health of the economy. The unemployment rate is the percentage of the total number of unemployed people in the labor force. To understand how to calculate the unemployment rate, we need to understand the terms: unemployed and labor force. The unemployed are defined as people who are actively looking for work but do not have a job. This is an important aspect because it tells us how many people are looking for work but have been unable to find one due to the economic situation. The active population is the sum of employees and the unemployed; from this we can determine the size of our economy and the labor force participation rate. By dividing the number of unemployed by the active population, we can then conclude the percentage of people who are actively looking for work out of the active population. It is obvious that the unemployment rate can determine the health of an economy; Generally speaking, the lower the unemployment rate, the more people have jobs and the healthier the economy. From the “Unemployment Rates versus Time” graph, we can clearly see that the average unemployment rates in the United States are higher than those in Hong Kong and Japan. I believe this is happening because ... middle of paper ... can further improve our measurement of the economy. The inflation rate clearly tells us how quickly prices are rising, and from there we can determine what is happening in the economy. From the “Inflation Rate vs. Time” chart, we can see that the inflation rate in the United States, Hong Kong, and Japan is moving at a constant rate. Although each country has a different inflation percentage, the price of its goods and services increases at a constant rate each year, indicating a healthy economy. Unemployment rate versus time (United States, Hong Kong China, Japan) Inflation rate versus time (United States, Hong Kong China, Japan)Works CitedQuotations:Hill, Steven. “Youth employment is bad, but not as bad as we are told.” Financial Times (London, England) (2012): n.pag. lexis nexis. Internet. February 25, 2014. Gapminder. Np, and Web. February 25. 2014. .