

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is figuring out working in America is a disaster.

They have been forced to add new metrics to their current population survey, the ability to collect data for up to 5 years of duration on the long term unemployed. Why do we need more details on duration of unemployment when 2 years in the past has been perfectly fine? Because we now have over 10% of those officially unemployed being so past two years.

Who would have thought we would need statistics on people wanting, needing a job, not being able to find one for half a decade? We do now. From the unemployment report overview, below is the graph of those unemployed (officially), 27 weeks or longer:

The BLS is reporting 10% of those unemployed have been so 2 years or longer.

Above is the median time for those unemployed. Notice the dramatic increase over the decade. The median is different from an average, or mean. The median is the half way mark. It means 50% of those unemployed took up to that amount of time to get another job.

The above is the average length of time, which is different from the median. The average, or arthimetic mean is calculated by:

Notice the difference between the median and mean. What this implies is there is a large percentage of people who are looking, looking, looking and cannot get any @&*)$@ job! That's why the average is higher, their job hunt is going on so long, it's biasing the average time dramatically upward. What happened to work as a right, a human dignity, as a moral concept, something a good society should always provide to the people? These Americans are not unacceptable, more United States businesses and especially multinational corporations, are unacceptable. Offshore outsourcing jobs, committing age discrimination daily, labor arbitraging workers and even trying to deny them unemployment benefits. It is even worse for those self-employed as temporary workers. Often companies, because they can get away with it, outright stiff them.

Effective with data for January 2011, the Current Population Survey (CPS) will be modified to allow respondents to report longer durations of unemployment. Presently, the CPS accepts unemployment durations of up to 2 years; any response of unemployment duration greater than this is entered as 2 years. Starting with data for January 2011, respondents will be able to report unemployment durations of up to 5 years. This change will likely affect estimates of average (mean) duration of unemployment. The change will not affect the estimate of the number of unemployed persons and will not affect other data series on the duration of unemployment. There has been an unprecedented rise in the number of persons with very long durations of unemployment during the recent labor market downturn. Nearly 10 percent of unemployed persons had been looking for work for about 2 years or more in the third quarter of 2010. Because of this increase, BLS and the Census Bureau are updating the CPS instrument to accept reported unemployment durations of up to 5 years. This upper bound was selected to allow reporting of considerably longer durations while limiting the effect of erroneous extreme values (outliers). The new upper bound of 5 years for reported unemployment duration is being phased in over the first 4 months of 2011, as the duration question is only asked of a portion of those unemployed in any given month. (The question is asked of unemployed persons who were not interviewed in the prior month and the newly unemployed. Duration is updated automatically for unemployed respondents who remain unemployed the following month.) By April 2011, all households will have been able to report the new duration upper limit.

We won't be able to zero in on the new duration statistics until next April and lord knows, it will make the headlines when this data is released.

Earlier we showed those who are long term unemployed are responsible, educated and hard working. If you don't believe it, watch the report again. Contrast that report on with this, something we've seen this over and over, employers refusing to hire....the unemployed!

There is one thing that's truly ridiculous and that is using someone's credit score to get a job. Folks, if they could pay their bills out of thin air, they wouldn't be applying for your crappy job. It's seriously ridiculous, if you need a job because you cannot pay your bills, oops, you will get denied a job. This should be made illegal. It's one thing to examine someone's criminal record, quite another to deny someone unemployment on the fact they need....employment.