The mean duration of unemployment has approximately doubled in the U.S. between the early 1950s and the mid-1990s, with most of the increase occurring since the early 1970s. We first construct a simple model linking the average duration of unemployment with the speed of technical change. Using...

I develop three measures of structural change on the basis of U.S. data: changes in occupational composition, changes in input-output technical coefficients, and changes in capital coefficients. Using pooled cross-section, time-series data for 44 industries over the period from 1970 to 1990, I...