Civilians Unemployed for 27+ Weeks at Record High

posted by Nima

May 3, 2009 · Posted in General Economics

The number of civilians unemployed for 27+ weeks is soaring to record highs since it was first tracked:

5 yr chart:

Click on image to enlage.

60 yr chart:

Click on image to enlarge.

Part of the stimulus bill was an extension of unemployment benefits:

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) has a Q&A (PDF) that details the new options available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which allows high unemployment states to provide up to 13 to 20 weeks of additional extended benefits to workers who run out of federal funded unemployment benefits. Currently, there are 20 to 33 weeks of benefits for workers who run out of their state unemployment, so this plan, if adopted by the states, would provide additional weeks of federally funded benefits.

This, of course, will only aggravate the numbers above for a simple reason: The more something is subsidized, the more of it will be produced.

Tags: civilian unemployment, unemployment

Comments

2 Responses to “Civilians Unemployed for 27+ Weeks at Record High”

Rafi on May 3rd, 2009 6:32 pm

But what about the percentages of unemployed workers to the overall population? Clearly we have more people unemployed just in terms of numbers but it’s possible that the percentage might not be as different as previous recessions…

Just a thought.
Nima on May 3rd, 2009 8:03 pm

Good point :)

The only chart that comes close to it is this one:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UNRATE?cid=12

But they don’t have a percentage of population for people unemployed 27+ weeks.