What Is Structural Unemployment?

Unemployment of any kind is tough enough, but sometimes industries (or segments of industries) go through changes so major that the ground shifts underneath us and the careers we once had start to disappear. I’m sure you can think of quite a few career fields going through major changes at the moment.

When I was growing up in upstate New York, I had a girlfriend whose family raised chickens (among other things) and sold eggs to make a living. Little by little, small egg farms began to disappear, gobbled up or simply pushed aside by the large egg producers.  (Uh…I don’t mean they just produced large eggs.) Eventually, my friend’s dad couldn’t make ends meet any more and had to give up the business he loved. And so he took a forced career change, going to work at a local hardware store. (Can you relate?)

Although the good news was he had a job and could support his family, he felt he had lost a part of himself. He was a farmer in his heart and never quite got over the loss.

A lot of people today are seeing the ground shift under them too. Once perfectly good career options are fading away – some becoming as rare as (sorry) hen’s teeth. Many people are taking jobs where they can and seeing where that leads (a perfectly viable choice since one never knows where things can lead), but many are also seeing this as an opportunity for career transition – a time to explore options and dreams.

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NOTE: If you want to suggest changes to this or any other definition in our career dictionary, please feel free to add  your suggestions in a comment.