Three Unemployment Charts

This post provides updated charts to the "Three Unemployment Charts" post of January 12.

As I have commented previously, most notably in an October 6 post, in my opinion the official methodologies used to measure the various job loss and unemployment statistics do not provide an accurate depiction. However, I believe that the following charts provide an interesting perspective of the officially-stated employment situation from a long-term historical perspective.

The first two charts are from the St. Louis Fed site. Here is the Median Duration of Unemployment:



Here is the chart for Unemployed 27 Weeks and Over:



Lastly, a chart from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve site. This shows the employment situation vs. that of previous recessions (as characterized by severity):



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

Back in July 2009 I wrote a series of blog posts titled "Why Aren't Companies Hiring?"


SPX at 1192.13 as this post is written