First, the premium for skilled workers has been falling: a surge in secondary education has increased the supply of literate, reasonably well-schooled workers, and years of steady growth have raised relativedemand for the less skilled in the formal workforce, whether as construction workers or cleaners.
In a paper presented to the conference, they showed that those sectors and demographic groups that contributed most to the rise in unemployment in 2007-09 also contributed most to its decline in 2009-12, which suggests that shifts in relativedemand for workers could not explain the high level of unemployment.