By Ben Casselman
....
A FiveThirtyEight analysis shows that by far the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be out of
work for a year or more is the state of the economy when he or she
loses his or her job.
1
Over the past 15 years, a period spanning two recessions, a one-point
increase in the unemployment rate increased an individual’s odds of
remaining unemployed for at least a year by about 35 percent. No other
characteristic — age, sex, race, marital status, education or
occupation, among others — had even close to that big an effect.
Americans who had the misfortune of losing their jobs during the
height of the most recent recession in 2009 were more than four times as
likely to end up out of work for a year or longer than those who lost
their jobs during the comparatively good economy of 2007. Extended
unemployment benefits, which are often cited as a driver of the
persistently high levels of long-term joblessness, don’t appear to be a
major cause of the pattern.
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National Jobs for All Coalition
http://www.njfac.org/