As we head into the election year, it is worth noting that no American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.
Not all has been bad news: the unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent in November and, in seven of the past eight weeks, initial jobless claims have been below the 400,000 mark -- a level economists note marks the threshold between a stagnant and growing job market.
However, this series of charts on the U.S. employment situation paints a rather grim picture.
Labor participation rate.BLSOnly 58% of the 16 years and older population are employed.research.stlouisfed.orgThe average unemployed person in the U.S. has been looking for work for 41.1 weeks, or more than 10 months. That is the longest average unemployment spell since the Labor Department started keeping track in 1948.Although the Labor Department changed the way it calculates this number in January, but even using the old methodology, workers still had the toughest time finding jobs.To adjust to the unprecedented rise in the number of people with very long durations of unemployment during the recent labor market downturn (nearly 11 percent of unemployed people had been looking for work for about 2 years or more in the fourth quarter of 2010), BLS updated the Current Population Survey to accept reported unemployment durations of up to 5 years, compared with 2 years in the past.With people remaining unemployed for longer durations, consumers would become nervous to spend and the government finances would be negatively impacted with additional debt burden in the long-term.research.stlouisfed.org This graph shows the duration of unemployment as a percent of the civilian labor force between 2000 and 2011. Four categories are shown here: less than 5 weeks, 6 to 14 weeks, 15 to 26 weeks, and 27 weeks or more.In the past 11 years, 27 weeks and over saw the biggest jump, while the shorter-terms generally declined. Since the start of the recession, people who had been job hunting for 15 weeks or more have increased sharply, while the other two categories moved in the opposite direction.research.stlouisfed.orgThis is a similar chart to the previous one, but over a longer time span. Over the course of more than 40 years, the 27 weeks and over category moved upward, while the less than 5 weeks category trended downward.research.stlouisfed.orgSince the winter of 2007, the number of people who are employed part-time because they can’t get full-time jobs has been on the rise.This is referred to as underemployment, which means the employment situation is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and over-qualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the requirements of the job.research.stlouisfed.org
