Average Duration Of Unemployment Approaching One Year

[Bryan Hancock]

So the numbers on the job market came out today and they aren't good. I am sure things like Japan and some of the domestic disasters hurt the numbers, but they are still horrible by all accounts. The following link lists people not in the labor force that want a job and the average duration of unemployment:

The Real Unemployment Picture

The average duration of unemployment is now at 39.7 WEEKS! Wow! To put that in perspective....the previous highs were around 20 weeks or so...so we are around twice as bad as the past recessions on record.

These numbers are staggering to me. Any thoughts on what can be done to correct them?

[Michael Zuber]

Wow not a light topic. In an economy that is or at least supposed to be driven by the Consumer we need a couple of things to stop getting worse so we can start to heal and get better.
We need to reverse the trend in:
Confidence - I am afraid this won't happen until at best next year as I think data gets ugly the rest of the year. And it might take a new election to cause an inflection point.
Manufacturing - we still build lots of things but we need to build more and thus with the dollar losing value this might actual help but again this is years away at best as you don't just to turn on a new manufacturing plant.
Real Estate Prices or Property: A lot of our economy is based on property rights and unfortunately we had a big old party and over leveraged property and built too many mcmansions and we have to pay up for these sins. We have 3 to 5 years of pain left.

So in the end we need to get to the bottom of housing and suffer so more pain so we can start to turn confidence around and hopefully start building more stuff for the rest of the world to consume.

My guess is the reported Unemployment rate stays above 8% until after next election. And Under employment stays above 15%.