I've been wondering how many of these jobs are just gone for good due to higher efficiency and permanently increased productivity? We assume most of the unemployment & underemployment is caused directly by the recession but I'm not so sure about that. It seems possible to me we had sort of a jobs bubble where companies were overstaffing and the recession just exposed this. If you lay off 20% of your staff and magically the other 80% pickup the slack what incentive is there to re-expand by 20%?<p>My theory is modern technology and communications have just made certain positions inherently more productive. I can think of a time not that long ago where I may have lost an hour a day driving back to my office just to check my e-mail. Now I do that throughout the day on my SmartPhone while working on other projects. For a less skilled job I look at how grocery stores now scan products by UPC. There goes the job of the 19 year old tagging every can of corn with a little price tag sticker. When you run out of corn your computer inventory (tracked by UPC) knows about it. You spend 30 seconds re-ordering more through a computer instead of 15 unproductive minutes on the telephone waiting for the supplier to take your order. If these scenarios are being repeated in different ways all over the economy I think we need to consider that the rise in worker productivity is permanent and these jobs are gone for good.
The minimum wage makes it difficult to hire unskilled workers. If it didn't exist, there would be a lot less unemployment for young people just starting out.
How is a young person with little or no work experience and no college education "underemployed"? That is basically the least qualified group possible.