Where Are The Jobs?
“Long-term unemployment has risen dramatically during the course of the recession – this increase is one of the most dramatic and important unemployment trends. In a healthy economy, we should expect to see a short duration of average unemployment. This signal indicates an economy where workers’ skills are transferrable and they are able to quickly move in and out of sectors of an economy in flux. During the 50 years from 1950 to 2000, this was the nature of unemployment in the United States, with an average of 12.4% of total unemployment lasting for periods less than or equal to 27 weeks.
Last month, over 44.1% of unemployed workers (over 6.5 million workers) had been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. This is the highest relative level of long-term unemployment in the United States since the beginning of BLS records in 1948; at the start of 2008 only 18.3% of unemployed workers fell into this category. Importantly, these measures of unemployment exclude workers who desired employment but were, for various reasons, not included in BLS’s unemployment calculations – an estimated 5.8 million workers. When these workers are included in the overall totals of the unemployment, the relative percentage of long-term unemployed workers is certain to increase as well as the absolute number of unemployed.
This trend has continued unabated despite numerous jobs bills and policy interventions.”
