Any way you look at it, 40% of the unemployed, or 4% of the workforce, a record number of people, or 6.1 million, are now unemployed for over 27 weeks. In November this number was 5.9 million, and a year ago it was a meager 2.5 million. Green shoots.

The average duration of unemployment has surged to 29.1 weeks, from 28.6 weeks in November, and 19.5 a year ago.