ust be
through re-education, personal reform, or change of occupation.

Many persons look upon this type of cases as almost wholly accounting
for the problem of the unemployed. They are confirmed in this opinion
by the fact that the out-of-work group in any trade at any time is, on
the average, the least efficient group of workers in the trade. This
results from selection by the employers. This selection is due to
the _relative_ not to the _absolute_ efficiency or inefficiency of
workers, and must result whenever there are any discoverable economic
differences in the workers (all things considered) that are employed
at the same wage. This would continue even tho the poorest workers
were to raise their efficiency above that of the best men now
retained. "Personal inefficiency" may explain a chronic low wage or
absolute unemployability in a particular case, but it does not
explain intermittent lack of work for those willing and able to work.
Unemployment is a social problem and not merely an individual problem.

Sec. 15. #Maladjustment of wages causing unemployment.# It seems
highly probable that the artificial maintenance of a wage above the
competitive, or value-equilibrium, rate of the individual, whether
this be done by sympathy, by custom, or by the action of trade unions,
must cause some maladjustment of workers in relation to available jobs
and thus increase unemployment. To doubt this is again to maintain
the absolute inelasticity of the demand for labor with changes in its
price.[10] If the true equilibrium wage in a certain industry were
$3.00 a day, then a wage of $4.00 a day would attract to the trade
more than enough workers to meet the demand for labor in normal
periods (unless entry to the trade is controlled by monopoly power),
and at length the losses from unemployment would balance the day-wages
received in excess of the rate obtaining elsewhere for that quality
of labor. Any artificial obstacles to change of occupation or to
concessions in the kind of work done and in the rate of wages must
operate to increase the maladjustment. So far as this maladjustment
occurs, it may cause unemployment neutralizing the apparent gain
of higher day-wages obtained by monopoly power. The very inertia of
wages, however, in new price situations[11] makes the wage-workers
resist more vigorously such a policy of wage concessions. Moreover,
the difficulty here indicated is more particularly one occurring
in static conditi