[slvr77]

Healthy economies will always displace workers through creative destruction. For example, the internal combustion engine decreased demand for horse whip makers but increased demand for oil workers. While few horse whip makers could make the transition to oil workers a healthy economy can usually adjust.

Structural problems in economies can also create sub-optimal use of labor. For example, in a debt based economy debt and savings are just call options on future labor (production). In a healthy economy the concept of debt and savings is used as a way for people to buy and sell call options on their labor. For example a student may choose to sell a call option on his labor by taking on debt for an education with the expectation that his labor will be more valuable in the future. Somebody in middle age may chose to buy a call option on the students labor with the expectation that the value of his labor will decline in his old age.

However in a pathological economy structural problems can create sub-optimal use of labor. For example, if deflation becomes entrenched then all rational actors may chose to defer consumption into the future where labor will be cheaper. This can create structural unemployment like it did in the 1930's. Other examples where the available call option on future labor is smaller than the demand. For example the demand from Baby Boomers looking at retirement, demand from the 1% to maintain their relative wealth, corporate coffers that can't be repatriated due to tax minimization strategies and sovereign wealth funds may exceed the productive capacity of the future labor pool.

In that case the economic system may be 'signaling' to the rising generation to defer their labor but in a way that exceeds their actual capacity to defer the labor creating sub-optimal use of labor.