Is America facing an increase in structural unemployment?
The Economist asks:
Is America facing an increase in structural unemployment?
and invited economists answer here.
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
dan:
Why the hell would anyone invest in Laobor intensive business when they could invest in Wall Street and capital appreciation which has a far greater return. Hello McFly . . .
Wouldn’t have this problem with single payer
paulo-
signle payor certainly hasn’t done anyhting to reduce structiral unemployment in europe.
i suspect that this current bout of persistent unemployment has to do with 2 things: overcapacity and reduced labor mobility due to people being underwater on their mortgages.
there is no quick fix for either, so i fear this is going to be with us for a while. that does pose the risk of creating a different type of structural ememployment, as those who have been out of work for 9-12 months start to see networks and skills atrophy.
it’s not a great situation, but i fear there’s not much that can be done apart from chewing through it. recessions resulting from debt/real estate busts are just flat out harder to recover from.
Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman guess yes (I suspect that they wrote for The Economist then posted little bits on their blogs). I am not at all convinced at all (see my post above).