While the unemployment rate for people out of work for six months or less has returned to prerecession levels, the levels of unemployment for workers who remain jobless for more than six months is among the most persistent, negative effects of the Great Recession, according to a new national study at Rutgers. In fact, one in five workers laid off from a job during the last five years are still unemployed and looking for work, researchers from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found.
Among the key findings of "Left Behind: The Long-term Unemployed Struggle in an Improving Economy":
As of last August, 3 million Americans, nearly one in three unemployed workers, have been unemployed for more than six months and more than 2 million Americans have been out of work for more than a year, the researchers said. While the percentage of the long-term unemployed (workers who have been unemployed for more than six months) has declined from 46 percent in 2010, it is still above the 26 percent level experienced in the worst previous recession in 1983.
For the survey, the Heldrich Center interviewed a representative sample of 1,153 Americans, including 394 unemployed workers looking for work, 389 Americans who have been unemployed for more than six months or who were unemployed for a period of more than six months at some point in the last five years, and 463 individuals who currently have jobs. This research provides a detailed record of the enduring effects of the Great Recession on the unemployed and long-term unemployed five years after the economy started growing again in June 2009.
The survey also found that:
"While the worst effects of the Great Recession are over for most Americans, the brutal realities of diminished living standards endure for the three million American workers who remain jobless years after they were laid off," said Professor and Heldrich Center Director Carl Van Horn, who co-authored the study with Professor Cliff Zukin of Rutgers' Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. "These long-term unemployed workers have been left behind to fend for themselves as they struggle to pull their lives back together."
The report can be found online at: http://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/products/left-behind-long-term-unemployed-struggle-improving-economy
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