A Job, at Last

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Great Recession was how high long-term unemployment got. It is getting better, slowly, and finally is at least lower than it was at the economic bottom in the early 1980s.

The chart below shows the proportion of the labor force that has been out of work for at least 15 weeks. At the worst in 2010, that figure was up to 5.9 percent, by far the highest since the government began collecting that data in 1948. The highest it had gotten before 2009 was 4.2 percent, in January 1983.

Now it is down to 3.9 percent, at least within the range of past experience.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Haver Analytics

There are still six million people listed as unemployed for more than 15 weeks, but that number is down by a third from the peak.

Of course, it is possible that some of the long-term unemployed simply gave up and dropped out of the labor force, and are therefore no longer counted as unemployed. But it appears that a lot of them have found work â€" finally.