Friday, July 3, 2009

US long term unemployment on the rise

The length of time that US workers remain unemployed is at its highest level in over forty years. The median number of weeks without a job is now 18 weeks. The previous peak was around 12.

The US labour market is creating a large pool of long term unemployed.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting to me that the chart seems to show an upwards trend. Does that mean that in our increasingly competetive and exacting workplace, that it is getting harder and harder to get back in if you fall out. As someone who has experienced a lengthy period of unemployment this seems to make sense to me, as the job market seems heavily biased towards moving people between jobs rather than unemployed people into jobs. The price of failure is increasingly high in Western society...

    ReplyDelete