Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/01/2010 -- Pasadena, CA, October 1, 2010 – A new report from Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry shows that out of the 600,000 people in the state who are unemployed several are educated with skills that are supposed to be in short supply.

The report, titled “A Profile of Pennsylvania's Unemployed People” also points out that several of the jobless residents are facing unemployment for the first time. The report shows that around 15 percent are college graduates, and another 24 percent have some college education. Around 40 percent have been unemployed for over 26 weeks, making them long-term unemployed.

There are also highly skilled professionals on the jobless payrolls now. There are 15,000 scientists, computer professionals and engineers, 22,000 education professionals and 39,000 managers and supervisors on the jobless list.

These figures throw in sharp contrast the claims made by conservative commentators about structural unemployment, which means firms are not able to find the right employees even though they want to.

A. Harrison Barnes, CEO of PhiladelphiaCrossing, believes that companies in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in particular are still hiring people. “There are still several jobs for the highly skilled professionals in the Philly metro area. This month we found over 25,000 jobs in the region just from employer websites.” PhiladelphiaCrossing is a job aggregator website that focuses only on the Philadelphia metro area.