Are things “different this time”?
Things are always “different this time” ;-)
More seriously, employment and unemployment rates are complex and dependent on what kind of macro-economics you use, and there are some impacts of government interventions, etc...
But this change can have a strong effect even outside the employment rate, which is what we are seeing: the wages of the low skilled and those who cannot retrain are plummeting, and we’re seeing a division into “lovely” versus “lousy” jobs (eg: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/20002/1/Lousy_and_Lovely_Jobs_the_Rising_Polarization_of_Work_in_Britain.pdf ).
Things are always “different this time” ;-)
More seriously, employment and unemployment rates are complex and dependent on what kind of macro-economics you use, and there are some impacts of government interventions, etc...
But this change can have a strong effect even outside the employment rate, which is what we are seeing: the wages of the low skilled and those who cannot retrain are plummeting, and we’re seeing a division into “lovely” versus “lousy” jobs (eg: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/20002/1/Lousy_and_Lovely_Jobs_the_Rising_Polarization_of_Work_in_Britain.pdf ).