Recovery-less Recovery: Unemployment Duration April 2013

Today's employment situation report showed that conditions for the long term unemployed improved in April  while still remaining distressed by historic standards.

Workers unemployed 27 weeks or more declined to 4.353 million or 37.4% of all unemployed workers while the median term of unemployment declined to 17.5 weeks and the average stay on unemployment declined to 36.5 weeks.

Looking at the charts below (click for super interactive versions) you can see that today’s sorry situation far exceeds even the conditions seen during the double-dip recessionary period of the early 1980s, long considered by economists to be the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression.

On The Margin: Total Unemployment December 2012

Today’s Employment Situation report showed that in December “total unemployment” including all marginally attached workers went flat at 14.4% while the traditionally reported unemployment rate also went flat at a revised 7.8%.

The traditional unemployment rate is calculated from the monthly household survey results using a fairly explicit definition of “unemployed” (essentially unemployed and currently looking for full time employment) leaving many workers to be considered effectively “on the margin” either employed in part time work when full time is preferred or simply unemployed and no longer looking for work.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics considers “marginally attached” workers (including discouraged workers) and persons who have settled for part time employment to be “underutilized” labor.

The broadest view of unemployment would include both traditionally unemployed workers and all other underutilized workers.

To calculate the “total” rate of unemployment we would simply use this larger group rather than the smaller and more restrictive “unemployed” group used in the traditional unemployment rate calculation.