South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Heather Boushey explains why “low skills aren’t causing the unemployment crisis.”

… In 2007, only about five percent of people in the United States who wanted a job couldn’t find one. Eighteen months later, nearly ten percent of those who wanted a job couldn’t find one. Did the skills of the labor force deteriorate so demonstrably in a year and a half that millions were suddenly unemployable?
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Of course not. What happened was the collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing financial crisis, which stripped trillions in wealth from family balance sheets and sank demand for goods and services.
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Indeed, most economists agree that today’s high unemployment is “cyclical.” That is, we agree that most people are out of work because of the recession and its lingering effects on the labor market, not because there is something wrong with the unemployed.