EYE on the PAST

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Jobs and
Unemployment
15
EYE Ons

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How Long Does it Take to Find a Job?

Some people are unemployed for a week or two and others

for a year or more.
The average duration of unemployment varies over the
business cycle—increasing in a recession and decreasing
during an expansion.

In 2000, at a cycle peak when the unemployment rate was

below the natural rate at 4 percent, the median time to find a
job was 6 weeks.
In 2010, just after a cycle trough when the unemployment
rate was above the natural rate at 9.6 percent, the median
time to find a job was 22 weeks.

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How Long Does it Take to Find a Job?

The figure shows the percentage unemployed at four

unemployment durations.
It shows that long-term unemployment barely exits at a
business cycle peak but is large at a business cycle trough.

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 The Current Population Survey

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the

Census go to great lengths to collect accurate labor
force data.
They constantly train and retrain around 1,600 field
interviewers and supervisors.
Each month, each field interviewer contacts 37
households and asks basic demographic questions
about all persons living at the address and detailed
labor force questions about persons aged 16 or over.

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 The Current Population Survey

Once a household has been selected for the survey, it

is questioned for four consecutive months and then
again for the same four months a year later.
Each month, the addresses that have been in the panel
eight times are removed and 6,250 new addresses are
added.
The rotation and overlap of households provide very
reliable information about month-to-month and year-to-
year changes in the labor market.

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Unemployment Around the World

Before the 2008–2009 recession, the U.S. unemployment

rate fell in the middle of the range experienced by other
countries.

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Unemployment Around the World

Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Eurozone have
higher unemployment rates than the United States and
Japan.
The newly industrializing countries of Asia have lower
unemployment rates.

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Unemployment Around the World

The differences in unemployment rate were much

greater during the 1980s and 1990s than in the 2000s.

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Unemployment Around the World

All of the countries with higher average unemployment

rates than the United States also have higher
unemployment benefits and more regulated labor markets.

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Women in the Labor Force

The labor force participation rates of women in most
advanced countries has increased since the 1960s, but
the level of participation varies a great deal.
Cultural factors play a role in determining national
differences in women’s choices, but economic factors
such as education will ultimate dominate cultural ones.

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 Your Labor Market Status and Activity

You are going to spend a lot of your life in the labor market.
Most of the time, you’ll be supplying labor services. But you
will have to find that job.
Most likely one job will not last your entire working life.
As you look for a job, get a job, quit a job and look for a
new job, you will pass through many of the population
categories used in the Current Population Survey.

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 Your Labor Market Status and Activity

Think about your current labor market status while you are
studying economics:
• Are you in the labor force or not?
• If you are in the labor force, are you employed or
unemployed?
• If you are employed, are you a part-time or a full-time
worker?

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 Your Labor Market Status and Activity

Now think about someone you know who is unemployed or

who has been unemployed.
Classify the unemployment experienced by this person as
• Frictional
• Structural
• Cyclical
How can you tell the type of unemployment experienced by
this person?

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 Your Labor Market Status and Activity

The labor market conditions that you face today or when

you graduate and look for a job depend partly on general
national economic conditions—on whether the economy is
in recession or booming.
But the labor market conditions also depend on where you
live.

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