Saturday, February 12, 2011

Median Unemployment Duration by Age Cohort


Okay, can BLS make it any more difficult to get at this data? grumble grumble rippensnatz... I ahd to end up going to some ftp directory and extracting data to flat files then import to MS Excel - bug or feature?

The data shows the other side of the UE story, that while the UE rate among the youngest cohort is the highest, the duration of that UE is the lowest. In addition to the 16 to 19 cohort, I emphasize the 44 to 55 cohort as that represents peak earning years. But among all cohorts we see increasing median duration of UE with increasing age.

So there appears to be another strong predictor of UE duration, a person's age (the other being the duration itself, the longer unemployed the likelier to remain there).


And here is what the absolute numbers look like for 27+ weeks UE duration by age cohort...

2 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

Nice charts.

Scott said...

That first chart would seem to rebut the argument that people on UE are "lazy and don't want to work". The short duration of UE at all age levels during the last expansion shows that people who lost their jobs found new ones in a reasonable amount of time.