I don't think unemployment is caused by out of work programmers. It's more the folks who have no or low skill jobs and those effected most by the recession such as construction workers.

It's hard for me to imagine a construction worker being able to transition from the blue collar culture to the white collar culture that most of these jobs fall into.

Again, It's not so much that construction workers are stupid, but if the ones that reroof my apartment are any indication, insulting each others mothers and swinging hammers at each other when one pisses the other one off are standard fair.