The issue of long-term unemployment has received repeated attention on this blog as I have sought to discover why and for how long the problem of staggeringly high long-term unemployment numbers will persist. Despite this pervasive need for jobs, somewhat of a paradox has emerged. A recent Wall Street Journal Article, Some Firms Struggle to Hire Despite High Unemployment, goes to great lengths to describe this phenomenon, although fails to explicitly acknowledge its apparent paradoxical nature.
The article tells an unheard story, not of layoffs or exploitative business practices, but of business owners who, despite their desire to hire new employees, have repeatedly encountered disinterest on the part of unemployed workers. The culprit?
As the article recognizes, the opportunity cost (i.e. the prospective benefits one gains from doing one thing instead of another) for taking such positions might prove too great for some workers. That is, structural changes and the “slashing” of “millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs” have resulted in a “glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work like the food servers that Pilot Flying J seeks for its truck stops.” This fact (though, for the most part, only supported through anecdotal accounts in the article) raises a question that has recently haunted political dialogues in Washington dealing with the issue of joblessness: the utility of unemployment benefits. Regardless of this question, however, the Journal’s article misconstrues the actual nature of the problem that confronts America’s unemployed.
While the article hones in on low-paying opportunities that have been passed over by job-seekers, what is actually at issue is a shortage of well-paying full-time positions for which the unemployed or underemployed can apply. And although the clouds of uncertainty continuing to loom over the American economy have yet to part, as last week’s posts indicated, employers are beginning to once again open their doors to new employees, even if they do so begrudgingly or wearily.
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