Three Unemployment Charts

Occasionally, I have posted charts concerning unemployment. With Friday's unemployment release, here are three charts that I find noteworthy:

First, from the St. Louis Fed site, the Median Duration of Unemployment.



Second, from the CalculatedRisk blog of 1/8/10, Unemployed Over 26 Weeks:



Third, again from the CalculatedRisk blog of 1/8/10 - I like this chart as it presents a relative depiction of Post WWII recession job losses. As one can see, our current period of economic weakness’s job losses are outsized both in duration and severity:



As depicted by these charts, our unemployment problem is severe. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any "easy" solutions.

A few months ago I wrote a series of blog posts titled "Why Aren't Companies Hiring?"


SPX at 1141.18 as this post is written