Structural Humbug Revisited
You see, when the Great Recession struck — a demand-side shock if ever there was one — it took no time at all for a strange consensus to develop in elite opinion, to the effect that a large part of the rise in unemployment was “structural,” and could not be reversed simply by a recovery in demand. Workers just didn’t have the right skills, you see. Many of us argued at length that this was foolish. If skills were the problem, where were the occupations with rapidly rising wages?