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| December 9, 2010 |
Obamanomics: 6 million Americans didn't work last year
Posted by Staff |
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The Wall Street Journal reports:
Nearly 6 million Americans looked for work but weren't able to find employment at all last year, a new report shows.
The Labor Department's report on work experience in 2009, released today, highlights the long-term unemployment problem that's likely to linger for years. Some 5.8 million job-seekers were without work for the entire year in 2009, an increase of 2.7 million from a year earlier.
The majority of those unemployed for the entire year, nearly 57%, were men.
Long-term unemployment, which describes people who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, has been more pervasive in the latest downturn than any other period on record. Of all those unemployed, 41.9% had been out of work for more than six months as of November.
Economists widely acknowledge the vexing nature of the problem. It has the potential to be long-lasting, it's expensive and it's not clear what policies would be most helpful in solving it.
"Long-term unemployment not only imposes extreme hardship on jobless people and their families, but, by eroding these workers' skills and weakening their attachment to the labor force, it may also convert what might otherwise be temporary cyclical unemployment into much more intractable long-term structural unemployment," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech in Germany in November.
Even though the economy is adding jobs again, those who have been unemployed the longest aren't likely to be among the first hired. Turning to disability benefits is a common path for those who become disheartened by the job search. Once they start receiving those benefits, they're likely to stay on the program for the rest of their lives - which comes with a hefty price tag.
Extended unemployment benefits have been touted as a way to keep those who have been out of a job engaged in the labor market because unemployed individuals must continue applying for positions in order to receive their benefits. Those benefits, which lasted for up to 99 weeks, have lapsed but a compromise may be reached to extend them for another 13 months. That still won't help the more than 1.5 million job-seekers who had been unemployed for 99 weeks or more as of last month. |
| 12/9/10 10:56 AM |
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