Dissecting the unemployment report - March 2013
For those who are into all the little details of it, the latest report is at this link:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
If you want to look at previous ones, this page has the archive:
http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives/empsit_nr.htm
I'd like to do a little analysis of the report each month, highlighting some aspect of it. For this month, we'll start out with a simple graph that answers the question "Have jobs been getting harder to find with every turn of the economic cycle??"
Yes:
I drew a line under that graph, which depicts the percentage of the unemployed who've been out of work for more than half a year. The line shows that, with the exception of the 1960's, each cycle of expansion and recession has been characterized by a larger number of the unemployed being unable to find work for more than half a year. In other words, jobs have been getting harder to find for all of our working lives, and of course in this cycle they've become really hard to find if you're unemployed (40% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than half a year).
I've read that even a small gap in a resume will put off someone from hiring you, and I'm sure that's true. It's gotta be tough for most people who've been laid off to find another job.