US / Adjusting to the ‘New Normal’ of Long-term High Unemployment

“When Europe went through big recessions in the 1970s and 1980s, people who lost their jobs were often out of work for a year or more. Long spells of unemployment led to people losing hope and losing their connection to the labor market. When the growth returns, those people really aren’t job-ready and so they’re left out of the recovery,” says Wharton business and public policy professor Justin Wolfers. “That historically has not been a problem in the U.S., where we have very short unemployment durations. If you are unemployed in this country, you have typically been unemployed for three months at a time. The problem now is that more than half the unemployed have been jobless for six months or longer.”

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via Adjusting to the ‘New Normal’: The Consequences of Long-term High Unemployment » Knowledge@Wharton.