It is a popular comment of businesses that employees are a company’s greatest asset, where employees are a firm’s “competitive advantage” as quoted by Anne M. Mulcahy. As employees are considered a very valuable resource, it is of notice that a recent article on the economist describes the increasingly pressing issues of unemployment in the American regions. The article describes a decreasing labour-force participation rate, which is the percentage of working age population that are either currently working or looking for work, where the percentage has dropped from 66% in 2007 to 63.7% in August 2013 which is a 35 year low. This may evolve into more of an issue as if this trend continues a shortage in labour may occur meaning companies will become more inefficient and have an increasingly difficult time in operating their companies. In order to begin addressing this issue and working towards increasing this statistic’s percentage, governments may want to increase minimum wage or improve on company’s employee benefits to increase working aged people’s incentives to work before this labour shortage evolves into a real issue. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21586810-rising-disability-claims-may-explain-americas-shrinking-labour-force-missing