Something happened in 2008: the Beveridge Curve shifted to the right and stayed that way. That means employers aren’t hiring as many unemployed people as they should be, according to a pre-2008 view of the world. It is also one of the reasons the economy feels like it is still bad, even though the recession officially ended five years ago.
The question is why is the curve so far off from what would be expected in a normal recovery? And how can things be brought back on track?
The answer often cited is that the economy has a skills mismatch. Fewer people are finding jobs than they have in the past because they aren’t qualified for the jobs that are available. This is less about the Great Recession and more about changing technology and needs. Imagine a 45-year-old man who has worked in an auto factory his whole life up until it was shut down in 2009. He can’t be quickly or easily retrained to be a nurse or a computer programmer, which are the only jobs he sees available that pay as much as his old manufacturing job, so he remains unemployed.
But there’s a problem with this theory: if the problem really is a mismatch of jobseekers to jobs, why did it happen so suddenly?
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Here’s why it’s so hard to land a job | Data Dive.
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