This post provides updated charts to the “Three Unemployment Charts” post of January 12.
As I have commented previously, most notably in an October 6 post, in my opinion the official methodologies used to measure the various job loss and unemployment statistics do not provide an accurate depiction. However, I believe that the following charts provide an interesting perspective of the officially-stated employment situation from a long-term historical perspective.
The first two charts are from the St. Louis Fed site. Here is the Median Duration of Unemployment:
Here is the chart for Unemployed 27 Weeks and Over:
Lastly, a chart from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve site. This shows the employment situation vs. that of previous recessions (as characterized by severity):
As depicted by these charts, our unemployment problem is severe. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any “easy” solutions.
Back in July 2009 I wrote a series of blog posts titled “Why Aren’t Companies Hiring?”
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SPX at 1192.13 as this post is written