FINANCIAL TIMES: …A big spike in long-term unemployment – defined as joblessness extending beyond 26 weeks – has been one of the defining features of the US recession and its aftermath. There were 3.8m long-term unemployed in February 2014, according to the latest labour department data, more than double the pre-financial crisis level of 1.9m in August 2008. The share of the jobless who have been out of work for more than six months has nearly doubled over that timeframe, from 19.8 per cent to 37 per cent.
There has been some improvement in reducing the numbers of the long-term jobless in recent years, but it has been extremely slow, which can be traced to the findings in [Alan] Krueger’s paper regarding their troubles in finding new work – and even when they do return to work, they often lose that position again.
“After 15 months, the long-term unemployed are more than twice as likely to have withdrawn from the labour force than to have settled into steady, full-time employment,” the paper reads. “The subset of the long-term unemployed who do regain employment tend to return to jobs in the same occupations and industries from which they were displaced, suggesting that significant challenges exist for helping the long-term unemployed to transition to growing sectors of the economy,” it adds… (more)
