Affording the Unemployed

Affording the Unemployed

While the unemployment rate continues to hover between 9 and 10 percent, the average amount of time wage earners remain unemployed has skyrocketed to previously unrecorded levels.[1] Keynesians fear that a weak fiscal and monetary response will allow the presently cyclically unemployed to become so permanently.[2] UC Berkeley professor Bradford DeLong puts it briefly, “Long-term unemployment has a way of turning into structural unemployment.”[3]

Paul Krugman, distraught over this alleged inaction on the part of the government and the Federal Reserve, explains the problem as one where those who remain unemployed for a long period of time will basically become unemployable.[4]

John Hopkins University professor Laurence Ball puts it bluntly, “These workers are unattractive to employers, or they don’t try hard to find jobs.”[5] The perceived problem is that the longer a worker remains unemployed, the likelier it is for said worker to lose relevant and marketable skills, or the less likely it is for that worker’s skills to remain in demand.[6] As Ball writes, “Presumably it is more likely that the long-term unemployed become detached from the labor market if they can live on the dole indefinitely.”

Read Article Here…

n