Help-Wanted Advertising, Job Vacancies, and Unemployment

THE UPWARD DRIFT in unemployment rates after the late 1960s that culminated in double-digit unemployment in the recession of the early 1980s has been a disappointing feature of the nation's economic performance. Most analysts see multiple causes behind that performance. One is the inflation that originated with tight labor markets in the late 1960s and accelerated with the supply shocks of the 1970s, requiring repeated doses of demand restraint that raised unemployment. But, in addition, growing structural problems, broadly defined as changes that have hampered the smooth matching of vacantjobs and unemployed workers, may have been important in the performance of this period.