This is the conclusion, as Pedro Nicolaci Da Costa of the Wall Street Journal reports, reached by:
Josh Bivens … economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington. [Unemployment] has remained unusually elevated during this recovery, leading to fears that the long-term jobless would suffer permanent difficulties in finding a job–either due to weaker skills or employer biases.
Policy elites have been arguing that this recession and anemic recovery are somehow special and unlike all those that have gone before, especially as regards unemployment. But:
The EPI study suggests most of the long-term unemployment problem is due to a weak economic backdrop, and will reverse once growth and the job market itself find themselves on a considerably stronger footing. “Despite the deep and obvious damage done by any spell of involuntary job loss, there is very little compelling evidence that the scarring effects are worse for longer spells,” the paper says.
The conclusion, which none would call counterintuitive, runs against the belief that:
… that the long-term jobless are increasingly unemployable due to an erosion of skills.
The remedy is in the boring old conventional wisdom. Economic growth stimulated by tax cuts and the relaxation of regulation.
Less Washington, then, even as the elites who work there propose more and ever more.
