Sunday, March 23, 2014

From WonkBlog: Five reasons why the long-term jobless don’t matter to the economy

A bit of depressing news. This throws cold water on the idea that long term unemployment has an easy solution.

Reason #3:
Long-term unemployed who leave the labor force are unlikely to come back
Roughly one in 10 of the long-term jobless left the workforce altogether within a few months of the survey, and most of them stayed out of the labor market after a year. The paper notes that the most common reason for leaving is that they no longer wanted a job, suggesting the decision is permanent.