Duration of Unemployment

The WSJ has an interactive graphic, article, and comment forum here.

This complex subject inspires heated debate in which debators chase red herrings, bring irrelevant topics to the table, and often make poigant comments. 

I checked Iowa's unemployment and according to the interactive, the unemployment in Iowa was 6.1%.  This is well below the national average.  The duration of unemployment seemed to fit historical data to me in which the average spell of unemployment is less than 26 weeks.

When my job becomes obsolete, I am structurally unemployed.  When I quit my job to move to a higher paying job or another job, I am frictionally unemployed.  When the economy dips into a recession and I lose my job, I am cyclically unemployed.  Construction jobs fall into the last category.  I believe, that 4% of the 9.2% unemployment rate is made up of thos cyclically unemployed.  The remaining 5% in my opinion are structurally unemployed.

A person whose job becomes obsolete will not return to the workforce.  There are exceptions, but this is why the length of long-term unemployment is lasting a year or more.  It's not that there are no jobs out there, it's that the skills of the unemployed do not match the skills needed in the workforce.  You can blame education for not preparing an agile workforce, you can blame globalization for competition, and you can blame the stimulus package.  But not all sectors have high unemployment.  Health, business services, and education are booming.  The workforce has to match what goods are being demanded.

The workers are losing bargaining power too the longer they are unemployed.  They lose skills too.  The psychic costs are huge.  Unemployment for those actively seeking employment is horrible.