With unemployment so high for so long, why is it that people are having a hard time find jobs? One argument summed up in The New Yorker states that the unemployed just don’t have the skills in demand.
. . . a big part of the problem is a mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills that people have. According to this view, many of the jobs that existed before the recession (in home building, for example) are gone for good, and the people who held those jobs don’t have the skills needed to work in other fields. A big chunk of current unemployment, the argument goes, is therefore structural, not cyclical: resurgent demand won’t make it go away.