Economix: Length of Unemployment Continues to Break Records

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

The average worker who is unemployed has been searching for a job for 40.4 weeks, or more than nine months, according to new Labor Department figures.

That is the longest average unemployment duration on record:

Bureau of Labor Statistics

This pattern is especially worrisome because unemployment begets unemployment — that is, for a whole host of reasons, people who are already out of work for a long period of time have very slim chances of finding new work in the near future. Just consider the catch-22 some employers are creating by stating that they’ll only hire workers who already have jobs.

In other words, what started out as a cyclical problem could morph into a structural one — particularly if the country allows the nation’s 14 million jobless workers to become a sort of underclass like the one many European countries have struggled with.

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