Krugman writes: "Matt O’Brien has an interesting if depressing piece on long-term unemployment, making the point that long-term unemployment is basically bad luck: if you got laid off in a bad economy, you have a hard time finding a new job, and the longer you stay unemployed the harder it becomes to find work."
Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)
Unemployment: It's Not Personal
18 May 14
att O’Brien has an interesting if depressing piece on long-term unemployment, making the point that long-term unemployment is basically bad luck: if you got laid off in a bad economy, you have a hard time finding a new job, and the longer you stay unemployed the harder it becomes to find work.
Obviously I agree with this analysis – and I’d add that O’Brien’s results more or less decisively refute the alternative story, which is that the long-term unemployed are workers with a problem.
You can see how this story might work. Suppose that workers have some quality – sticktoitiveness, or something – that doesn’t show up in official skill measures but which potential employers can intuit. Then workers lacking this ineffable quality would tend to lose their jobs and have trouble getting new jobs; the difficulty the long-term unemployed have in job search would reflect their personal inadequacy.
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