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This paper argues that several of the poor labor market outcomes observed in the great recession can be traced back to a change in the demand pattern for skilled workers that started with the tech bust of 2000. In particular, we show that around the year 2000, the demand for cognitive tasks underwent a reversal. In response, high-skilled workers moved down the occupational ladder and increasingly displaced lower-educated workers in less skill intensive jobs. While these effects where present before the financial crisis of 2008, they became more obvious after jobs associated with the housing bubble disappeared. The poor performance of the US labor market since the financial crisis of 2008 continues to generate enormous debate around the fundamental forces driving the decline. One side argues that difficulties in the US economy can be characterized as stemming from very weak aggregate demand due to a de-leveraging process and the zero lower bound constraint on nominal interest rates. The other side argues for a set of explanations which emphasize more structural difficulties in combination with cyclical elements. Many of these structural explanations view the housing boom of the 2000s as having hidden (for a few years) longer term problems with employment options. The housing bust accompanying the cyclical downturn is then viewed as unveiling those problems