Long term unemployment still epically distressed

Today's employment situation report showed that conditions for the long term unemployed were mixed in January and remained epically distressed by historic standards.

Workers unemployed 27 weeks or more declined to 5.518 million or 42.9% of all unemployed workers while the median number of weeks unemployed increased to 21.1 weeks and the average stay on unemployment declined to 40.1 weeks, the highest level ever recorded.

Looking at the chart above (click for super interactive version) you can see that today’s sorry situation far exceeds even the conditions seen during the double-dip recessionary period of the early 1980s, long considered by economists to be the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression.