September 20, 2010
There is an effort by many of the economists who could not see the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy to say that there is nothing that we can do about the damage because unemployment is structural, not cyclical. This means that the problem is that workers have the wrong skills for the jobs that are available or are in the wrong location. If this is the case, then the problem is not insufficient demand, the problem is with the workers who are unemployed. (Yes, this is another “blame the workers” story.)
The NYT lent space to Narayana R. Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Fed, to present this argument. Mr. Kocherlakota referred to statistics showing a large number of job openings.
Actually, the statistics do not show that the number of job openings is anywhere close to the number of unemployed workers. The most recent data show the number of openings at just over 3 million, a bit more than 1 opening for every 5 unemployed workers. This is still down by more than one-third from pre-recession levels.
It is also worth noting that we don’t see evidence of the other factors that would be consistent with growing structural unemployment. This mismatch story would imply that there are sectors of the economy in which wages are rising rapidly and average hours per worker are increasing, as employers increase hours due to their inability to find qualified workers. There is no major sector of the economy that fits this description.
[Addendum: the original mistakenly said “one opening for every unemployed worker,” rather than one opening for every five unemployed workers. Thanks to Tom for catching this.]
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