What are the implications of the long-term unemployment rate for the U.S. Economy?

The major implication of long term unemployment is that it
means the US economy has or will have a large number of workers whose skills are poorly
matched with the jobs that exist in the country at this
time.

Chances are that people who are unemployed for a long
time are structurally unemployed.  This means that their skills are no longer demanded
by employers in the US.   Structural unemployment is particularly challenging for an
economy because it implies a need for workers to learn new skills.  Learning new skills
is especially difficult for people who have been in the work force a long time and may
have difficulty in getting training for new jobs.

Thus, the
presence of long term unemployment implies that there are many workers whose skills are
no longer needed in our economy.  This is problematic because it means that either A) we
need to bring back the sorts of jobs these people can do or B) we need to get these
people trained for existing jobs.  Neither of these is particularly easy to do. 
Therefore, a high rate of long term unemployment implies that there is a fundamental
weakness in the US economy.