Untangling the Long-Term-Unemployment Crisis

Click here to read this article by David Wessel of the WSJ. Excerpts:

"...according to Fed governor Daniel Tarullo...there is little evidence that the bulk of today's unemployed would still be unemployed if the economy were growing faster or that the bulk of today's unemployment is, in the jargon of economists, "structural.""

""Most of the difference between the prerecession and current unemployment rates is attributable to an aggregate demand shortfall," said Mr. Tarullo"

"The Labor Department counts 14 million unemployed and 3.1 million job openings, or 4.6 jobless workers per job opening. Before the recession, the ratio was 1.5. If every opening were filled instantly, there would still be many unemployed."

"Wages aren't rising. "We don't see rapid wage growth almost anywhere, which is what you would expect if firms were bidding up the wages of qualified workers and were unable to find qualified workers among the unemployed," said Harvard University's Lawrence Katz."

"We had a fast-advancing economic decline with layoffs and hiring freezes in a broad range of sectors of the economy. That is not consistent with an increase in structural unemployment being the big explanation," Mr. Tarullo said."

"Data gleaned from help-wanted ads, surveys and government tallies did hint at a growing mismatch during the recession between skills jobless workers have and those employers want, but that "mostly has receded since 2009," says Mike Elsby, a University of Edinburgh economist."

"...between 12% and 33% of the five-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate is due to this mismatch."

"...there was reasonable speculation that those who couldn't sell their houses wouldn't move to where the jobs are. But the latest data suggest that phenomenon is, as Mr. Elsby puts it, "quantitatively negligible.""