Diary: The Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Is as Bad as Ever

The Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Is as Bad as Ever and it is also why tens of millions of Americans (like me) are forced to work overseas or to retire each year.--kas

by Ben Casselman, Chief Economics Writer at FiveThirtyEight

As of May [2014] , 3.4 million Americans had been out of work for more than six months. That's far too many -- two and a half times the pre-recession level -- but the number is falling fast, down more than 20 percent in the past year alone.

Only about 11 percent of the long-term jobless find jobs each month, little better than in the depths of the recession. Moreover, even those who do find jobs are often able to find only part-time or short-term work.

If they aren't finding jobs, what's happening to the long-term unemployed? They're dropping out of the labor force altogether. As the chart below shows, the share of the long-term jobless who are giving up their job searches has been rising steadily, even as the job-finding rate has remained largely flat. (Not shown on the chart are the more than 50 percent who remain unemployed.)

See graphs and entire story here.