When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (1996)[1] is a book by William Julius Wilson, Professor of Social Policy at Harvard.

[2] Wilson writes that chronic joblessness has deprived those in the inner city of skills necessary to obtain and keep jobs.

[3] Wilson writes that people who inhabit the disorganized, jobless ghettos face dim prospects.

Wilson rejects the idea that inner-city residents have a "culture of poverty" or damaged personalities.

[4] Wilson ties the disappearance of inner-city jobs to industrial restructuring, suburbanization, foreign competition, and racism.