This article seems pretty off-base. It's true that established businesses more rarely need to hire people because technology has eliminated a lot of clerical jo

This article seems pretty off-base. It's true that established businesses more rarely need to hire people because technology has eliminated a lot of clerical jobs, but the flip side is that there are lots of smaller companies now as well which only exist because they don't need to hire three secretaries and a file clerk. More importantly, though, the major problem in unemployment is that only 35% or so of the population have a college education. For them, unemployment is closer to 3% right now. Most of that 9.2% is out of work because demand is weak. People's skills didn't suddenly become obsolete at the stroke of midnight sometime in 2008. They were all formerly employed doing the exact moderately skilled work they'll be doing again when-and-if demand recovers the trend. They'll be doing it for precisely the same reason that an astrophysics Ph.D. is not in itself all the useful: most jobs are nebulous, ill-defined and require people to obtain new skills as they work. That is, the rest of the economy runs like the picture of the Valley HN likes to paint but with different skill and problem sets (and pay scales). That means an economy with lots of specialized workers, sure, but it also means lots of "office hackers" who just find ways to get things done as they come up. They'll be employed again, to do ill-defined jobs once demand recovers enough to start needing people who can just make things happen.