Structural Unemployment Expressed In Poetry

Part The First

Structural and cyclical
Are like a popsicle.
They'll melt when it's hot
And won't when it's not,
Seemingly fickle.

When dark clouds unfold
And the economy's cold,
Structural and cyclical,
Fall off the bi-cycle,
Losing their hold.

The longer the chill,
The longer they're ill.
Bloated they become.
But the pendulum
Is volatile.

With the economy re-heating
And unemployment depleting,
First cyclical,
Then structural,
Will begin their retreating.

When demand becomes fired
And the cyclical are hired,
Employers learn
It's the structurals turn
To be acquired.

For the time comes when
It pays to train them.
They become cyclically employed
Leaving a structural void
Which need not refill again.

Like a popsicle in the sun,
Cyclical and structural become one.
It's what free markets can do
If we allow them to.
Let's finish what we've begun.

Part The Second

For analysts who can't find
The structurals left behind
In the jobless rates
Of recent dates.
That data are the wrong kind.

Long in the queue,
They retreated to
The sidelines where
They're not counted there
As unemployed too.

They're hidden away
Earning no pay,
Statistically elusive
Yet quite diffusive,
Waiting for a better day.

That day will arrive,
When demand comes alive.
Enough work there'll be
For the ex-structural employee.
Hidden unemployment will dive.

Meantime there's training
To help in attaining
A skill that will be
A good recipe
For a job that's sustaining.