ABSTRACT
These tendencies provide a good explanation for the limited interest displayed in direct job creation as a policy response to the problem of joblessness since World War II. Nevertheless, I criticize these trends to the extent that they are based on a misperception of actual labor market conditions. I argue that empirical evidence suggests that aggregate job shortages exist not only during recessions, but across all phases of the business cycle, and that the amount of joblessness experienced in the economy is just as much a product of these conditions during periods of prosperity as it is during periods of recession. What behavioralist and structuralist factors explain, I suggest, is not the dimensions of the joblessness problem (how many people are jobless) but rather, its distribution among popUlation groups (why some people experience more joblessness than others).
