Jobs Don't Live Here Anymore | OurFuture.org

Jobs Don't Live Here Anymore | OurFuture.org

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What's really troubling is long-term unemployment.

EPI economists see the economic stimulus as alleviating the jobs crisis created under Bush. In fact, the economic recovery program already has saved or created some 750,000 jobs. Plus, says John Irons, EPI director of research and policy, the gross domestic product (GDP) report last week showing GDP shrunk far less in the second quarter of this year (-1 percent) than the first quarter (-6.4 percent). That means

we're beginning to see the fingerprints of the economic recovery package.

Yet millions of America's workers—the largest number of workers for the longest period out of any of the previous recessions—have been without jobs for more than six months. They are the long-term unemployed. And their prospects don't look so good. There are now 5.7 workers looking for every one job available. By comparison, at the start of the recession, there were 1.7 unemployed workers per job opening, less than a third of the current figure.

The more than 4.7 million long-term unemployed workers, says EPI economist Heidi Sheirholz, represent

enormous numbers. Job seekers are simply not able to find work in this labor market.

And worse:

We're looking at a really long period when long-term unemployment will continue to rise.

Many of these long-term unemployed are not casualties of the decline in manufacturing jobs. On the contrary, says Sheirholz:

Workers older and more educated are less likely to be unemployed but once they are unemployed they stay longer. They are a big contributing factor to the long-term unemployment.