The Causes of Structural Unemployment

There is a specter haunting advanced industrial countries:structural unemployment. Recent years have seen growing concernover declining jobs, and though corporate profits have picked upafter the Great Recession of 2008, jobs have not. It is possiblethat jobless recoveries could become a permanentfeature of Western economies.This illuminating book focuses on the employment futures ofadvanced industrial countries, providing readers with thesociological imagination to appreciate the bigger picture of whereworkers fit in the new international division of labor. The authorspiece together a puzzle that reveals deep structural forcesunderlying unemployment: skills mismatches caused by a shift frommanufacturing to service jobs; increased offshoring in search oflower wages; the rise of advanced communication and automatedtechnologies; and the growing financialization of the globaleconomy that aggravates all of these factors. Weaving togethervaried literatures and data, the authors also consider what actionsand policy initiatives societies might take to alleviate thesethreats.Addressing a problem that should be front and center for politicaleconomists and policymakers, this book will be illuminating readingfor students of the sociology of work, labor studies, inequality,and economic sociology.