After world food prices rose to a record level in February, World Bank President Robert Zoellick commented that food prices have risen to “dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people”. The FAO warned that, “The low-income food deficit co

Structural unemployment – unemployment stemming from a mismatch of workers' skills and job requirements – has been cited in mainstream media as the main cause of current, high unemployment. Data from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), however, suggest that structural unemployment is not what is ailing the economy. The graph below draws on data from the NFIB's monthly survey from December 2007 (the official start of the recession) to January 2011. Each month, the NFIB asks its sample of small businesses to state the single most important problem facing their business today. Since the recession began, respondents overwhelmingly have cited "poor sales," suggesting that today's unemployment is primarily due to a lack of demand. "Quality of labor," the factor most consistent with structural unemployment, barely made the list.

In fact, as the recession deepened, "poor sales"  became increasingly important, while "quality of labor" was cited less and less often. Furthermore, through an analysis of the NFIB data, we looked at the indicators that had the largest increase since and decrease since 2007, and they ended up being  "poor sales" and "quality of labor" respectively. These findings suggest that the current, high unemployment is indeed cyclical and not structural.

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, February 28, 2011

Dean Baker
Truthout, February 28, 2011

FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenburg Public Policy Center, wrongly attacked a number of prominent Democrats for correctly pointing out that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. The people attacked included New York Senator Charles Schumer, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, and President Obama’s Budget Director Jacob Lew.

This point should be pretty straightforward. Under the law, Social Security is financed by a designated tax, the 12.4 percent payroll that workers pay on their first $107,000 of income each year. The money raised through this tax is used to pay benefits. Any surplus is used to buy U.S. government bonds. All funding for the program comes either from this tax or from the bonds held by the program’s trust fund. (The Social Security system is also is credited with a portion of the income tax paid on Social Security benefits.)

This is the fifth installment of a new weekly feature at the CEPR Blog. Every Friday, we'll post a list of labor market related policy research reports from progressive research centers around the country. This week, reports from Center for American Progress, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center for Law and Social Policy, Economic Policy Institute, Political Economic Research Institute, and UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.