Measuring the Structural Severity of Unemployment.

The article examines the structural severity of unemployment in the United States after 1957. An index is suggested which is derived from the indexes used to measure concentration in production and in international trade. The author begins with the discussion of some arguments concerning the rationale of the index and some of its properties. Indexes are presented for a number of labor force attributes for the years 1947 to 1964. Severity of structural unemployment became more evident after 1957 only with respect to the age distribution of the labor force. It followed a cyclical pattern in the case of some attributes, but was invariant to the overall level of unemployment in the case of others.