The Era Of Permanently-High Unemployment

Recovery of employment from recession has been taking longer and longer every time we have a recession. Now, recovery is taking so long that unemployment is effectively permanently-high.

I tend to blame technological changes, rather than economic stagnation or overregulation, for the development. Employers lay off whom they consider to be crucial workers, only to discover they no longer need those workers, because savvy computer use allows one to do more with less. Times changed. So those workers never get rehired.

Another factor might be rising economic polarization and inequality. The sad fact is that the rich just don't need the poor, or at least, not enough to bother hiring them. Not even in a trickle-down world.

We're becoming more like the Philippines every day....