Brad DeLong cited this passage from Ron Suskind’s latest book on Monday: Both [Christina Romer and Larry Summers], in fact, were concerned by something the president had said in a morning briefing: that he thought that high unemployment was due to productivity gains in the economy. The same meme spread across the economics spectrum: Scott […]

This needs to be screamed far and wide from the highest mountain to the deepest sea, at the top of one’s lungs: There is no reason to think that the bulk of current unemployment is any sense “structural”: if aggregate demand were higher it would melt away just as unemployment in 1982 melted away. The […]

The Economist asks: Is America facing an increase in structural unemployment? and invited economists answer here.

Rdan After having received e-mails regarding Mark Thoma’s post on types of unemployment about who was included and excluded from the per centages, I thought a note on the relevance of the employment to population ratio to be worth repeating from comments on that post. Lifted from comments by run 75441 regarding “unemployment”here: …[D]id everyone […]

Rdan For the sake of argument, jobs in our future over the next few years or so appear to be in the health care industry and education. Jobs needing less education than a BA are among the fastest growing. Where are tomorrow’s jobs going to come from? The question is more urgent than ever, with […]