It's not a terrible metric. There is an actual correlation between long term unemployment and being unemployable because of lack of skills and incompetence, or serious personality defects, such as drug addiction, mental disorders, criminality, violent behavior and laziness.

Few long term unemployed are long term unemployed for no reason at all. It's hard to take the claims seriously of those such as the article author who are unable or unwilling to acknowledge this.

If authors and social workers are concerned with advocating on behalf of the small minority of long term unemployed who are actually employable, it would be more helpful to have articles that address the issue of how to find the small number of long term unemployed who would make good team additions, without having to spend far more time interviewing bad candidates than one does when hiring currently employed and short term unemployed persons.

Advocating for the government to hire unemployable people for positions in government is one of the worst suggestions I have ever heard. Things are already bad enough with endemic incompetence and corruption in government bureaus without seeking out even more of the incompetent and dangerous and giving them the power and influence that comes with government positions.