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Article: Structural Unemployment
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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STRUCTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT
Structural unemployment is a type of unemployment that occurs to workers who are displaced by a change in marketplace needs. When the computer industry began its rapid rise, many workers were caught at a disadvantage. They did not learn the skills or did not already have them coming into the job market, which now demanded computer know-how. Unless these individuals learned the necessary new skills, they faced the possibility of structural unemployment.
Another instance where structural unemployment occurs concerns geography. During the 1970s, the automobile industry, concentrated in the Midwest, experienced a downturn. As a result, many in the auto labor force ...