Is High Unemployment Recession-Proof?

The direct correlation between unemployment and the great recession may be less than meets the eye, or is commonly perceived, so says a new report.

The cause of the near-doubling of national employment in the wake of the financial crisis (from 5.8 percent at the end of 2008 to 9.6 percent at the end of 2010) may in fact have roughly as much to do with structural factors as it does with cyclical factors, argues a new working paper put out by the International Monetary Fund. The paper, entitled, "New Evidence on Cyclical and Structural Sources of Unemployment," was put together by IMF economists Jinzhu Chen, Prakash Kannan, Prakash Loungani and Bharat Trehan.