The President spoke of the Long Term unemployed in the SOTU address but did he tell you what these people used to do for work? No? Ok, I will here...

What particular part of the economy did the currently Long Term Unemployed separate from when they lost their job?

I have to tell you I am VERY shocked by this. I assumed they would be part of an industry segment that was lagging in new job creation so there would be little opportunity to find work doing what they did before.

I would have expected Manufacturing and Construction to have much higher rates of long term unemployed as these industries have been disproportionately negatively impacted by the recession and are still lagging.

Source: NPR

The Top 3 and the 4th one are areas where job growth has been notably strong since the US officially exited the recession in June of 2010.

These job categories, except for "Professional and Business Services"(for the most part) are predominantly lower wage, lower skilled positions.

How do these people with no significant long term skills (just being honest) get absorbed back into the economy in a meaningful way?

What possible SPECIFIC policies can target these folks for gainful employment?

I am guessing the Minimum Wage will be mentioned as well.

So, we have lots of low skilled, low wage workers (don't look at me, look at the graph) on long term unemployment and the solution is to increase the cost of hiring these people (if they can get hired)?

Help me out with this, please...