Okay, from Macroeconomics, by Gregory Mankiw, chapter 6 (unemployment), part 6-3 (Real-wage rigidity and structural unemployment), page 165:
“The unemployment resulting from wage rigidity and job rationing is sometimes called structural unemployment. Workers are unemployed not because they are actively searching for jobs that best suit their individual skills but because there is a fundamental mismatch between the number of people who want to work and the number of jobs that are available.”
Which is why I used the example of the shrinking American automobile industry. He continues…
“At the going wage, the quantity of labor supplied exceeds the quantity of labor demanded, so many workers are simply waiting for jobs to open.”
According to Mankiw, sectoral shifts, in the face of wage rigidity (more specifically, minimum wage laws, unions and collective bargaining, and efficiency wage theory), are the cause of structural unemployment. 90% of all economic principles are not agreed upon, which is why you must be careful, and not take anything you read as economic fact.
The word hammer, and the word pound also have multiple definitions. Structural unemployment was defined by Mr. Catalan from a textbook. You can give whatever name you want to the phenomenon he describes, but that does not make what he is saying incorrect any more than me defining a tool designed to transfer kinetic energy to another object as a hammer makes me incorrect.
I still don’t understand why you are arguing with Mr. Catalan. He calls structural unemployment unemployment that occurs when someones skill set is no longer marketable. You must define that as something else. So what.
Are you saying that unemployment doesn’t occur when someone’s skills are no longer marketable? You must agree that the phenomenon Mr. Catalan describes does in fact occur. He calls it structural unemployment, you call it something else, and I call it adfagdabar. So what. It’s the same phenomenon.
The point is it that the phenomenon does in fact occur. Where did all the workers go that were once employed in the manufacture of the buggy? They were unemployed because nobody wanted a buggy anymore, same with the all the horse stall laborers. Mr. Catalan calls that structural unemployment, so do macro textbooks. Who cares if you want to use to term structural unemployment to mean something else.
Like I said, I don’t understand why an argument about this is even taking place.
You’ve missed the point. There are only two real causes of unemployment, A) you’re looking for another job (which may or may not take a long time depending on what you want), or B) you’re unwilling to take a pay cut (or not allowed to do so). You’re right, you can call this whatever you want, but in no way is long term unemployment caused by creative destruction.
Again, you may lose your job because of sectoral shifts, or you may lose your job because you sexually harassed your secretary, but none of this is really important. The question at hand is why you remain unemployed, and how it effects the economy as a whole. If you decide not to work because of unemployment insurance, that’s one thing, and it’s different that not working because you can’t find a wage you feel is appropriate.