Department of Labor Logo United States Department of Labor
Dot gov

The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Share of long-term unemployed declined in 1998

February 23, 1999

Of the 6.2 million people who were unemployed in the average month of 1998, about 42 percent had been unemployed for less than 5 weeks, slightly more than 31 percent were out of work for 5 to 14 weeks, and 26 percent were "long-term" unemployed—workers out for 15 weeks or more. The median duration of unemployment fell from 8.0 weeks to 6.7 weeks.

Percent of unemployed by duration of unemployment, 1997 and 1998
[Chart data—TXT]

From 1997 to 1998, the share of worker’s experiencing long-term unemployment dropped by 4.2 percentage points, about the same amount as the 4.5-point increase in the share of worker’s in short-term unemployment spells. Within the long-term unemployment category, 2-1/2 percentage points—about 60 percent—of the decline was among workers jobless for 15 to 26 weeks. The remainder was among those unemployed for 27 weeks or more.

These data on the duration of unemployment are produced by the Current Population Survey. More information can be found in table 30 of the January 1999 edition of Employment and Earnings. The data in this article are 1997 and 1998 annual averages of the duration of spells of unemployment still in progress at the time of the survey.

SUGGESTED CITATION

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Share of long-term unemployed declined in 1998 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/feb/wk4/art02.htm (visited March 19, 2024).

OF INTEREST
spotlight
Recent editions of Spotlight on Statistics


triangle