Talk:Structural unemployment

message: Excellent structural improvements by --Vuo raised standards for syntactic consistency and factual accuracy of this article. metavalent (talk) 14:53, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Someone needs to fix the hierarchy of the headings.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Syr0 (talk • contribs) 03:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad Formatting 

message: This is all complete baloney:
"Structural unemployment is often brought about by technological changes that make the job skills of many of today's workers obsolete, and can be addressed by either providing better information to workers who are structurally unemployed or by retraining these workers to fill new jobs that are in higher demand in the economy.[1]
Another way of addressing structural unemployment would be retraining workers with obsolete job skills to work in fields that need workers with a different set of skills. When welders on automobile assembly lines were replaced by robots, the demand for welders went down, but the demand for people to maintain and program automobile assembly line robots went up. Workers who lost their jobs as welders on assembly lines when robots were introduced could be retrained to maintain and program those same robots.  Those workers who were able to successfully retrain to maintain and program assembly line robots would no longer be unemployed, and less structural unemployment would exist in the economy."
When automobiles were introduced in the early 1900s the employment of horses reached its peak, declined, and never recovered. To assume structural unemployment caused by automation can be meaningfully addressed in the way suggested above is inane. 
Although a few workers could be retrained to repair the automotive robots in the example above, the vast majority of the displaced assembly line workers were unemployable, and would not find replacement jobs in the automotive industry. This is borne out by the history of automation in US car manufacturing from the 1980s through today. 
If the author is going to make such sweeping statements, they're going to need a lot of citations. I can't provide them, but here are citations proving their example and assumptions are deeply flawed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/business/economy/the-mirage-of-a-return-to-manufacturing-greatness.html?_r=0
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/manufacturing-jobs-are-never-coming-back/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/world-without-work/395294/
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/views-from-those-who-expect-ai-and-robotics-to-displace-more-jobs-than-they-create-by-2025/
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-blue-collar-jobs-are-dissapearing-2012-1
Nicole Sherburne
nicolesherburne@gmail.com
96.27.104.7 (talk) 02:26, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The introduction to this article is largely uncited and makes some very questionable assumptions. When automotive workers were replaced by robots the total number of auto worker jobs per car manufactured decreased, and never recovered.  

message: If a real Wiki editor wants to restore anything I'm removing that's fine, but please make sure there are new citations to back up anything restored. Let's not have a bunch of misinformation in Wikipedia. It should be neutral as to a person's faith in capitalism, socialism, economic growth, or retraining programs. This is a fact zone, not a place for opinions. 
Nicole Sherburne
nicolesherburne@gmail.com
96.27.104.7 (talk) 02:35, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm going to go ahead and remove the opinionating that is not backed by citations. It's awful.  

message: Structural unemployment is a form of unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills that workers in the economy can offer, and the skills demanded of workers by employers (also known as the skills gap).  Structural unemployment is often brought about by technological changes that make the job skills of many of today's workers obsolete, and can be addressed by either providing better information to workers who are structurally unemployed or by retraining these workers to fill new jobs that are in higher demand in the economy.The Increase in Unemployment Since 2007: Is It Cyclical or Structural? Congressional Research Service, Jan. 24, 2013; accessed 2016-06-17
Another way of addressing structural unemployment would be retraining workers with obsolete job skills to work in fields that need workers with a different set of skills.  When welders on automobile assembly lines were replaced by robots, the demand for welders went down, but the demand for people to maintain and program automobile assembly line robots went up.  Workers who lost their jobs as welders on assembly lines when robots were introduced could be retrained to maintain and program those same robots.  Those workers who were able to successfully retrain to maintain and program assembly line robots would no longer be unemployed, and less structural unemployment would exist in the economy.
Structural unemployment is one of several major categories of unemployment distinguished by economists, including frictional unemployment, cyclical unemployment, and classical unemployment.
Because it requires either migration or re-training, structural unemployment can be long-term and slow to fix.
96.27.104.7 (talk) 02:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is what was there before I deleted things.