State of Business: The Unemployables

From the Federal Reserve Board came the best economic omen yet: an announcement that industrial production had jumped 2.5% in April—the biggest increase since December 1959. But the great debate among U.S. economists last week dealt not with the prospects for recovery but with a problem that may well endure far beyond recovery: unemployment. Economists of the stripe of Federal Reserve Board Chairman William McChesney Martin Jr. believe that, for the first time in its history, the U.S. may be facing the emergence of several million "unemployables"—men and women who cannot...