Long-Term Jobless Rate Escalates

Veronique De Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, has mined an astounding nugget of information from last month's unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Just over 44 percent of the unemployed are long-timers: that is unemployed for more than 27 weeks. At the beginning of 2008, about 18 percent of the unemployed fit that category. Then there are another 5.8 million people who want to work, but for one reason or another were not included in the BLS unemployment numbers. Frightening numbers for the economy and the unemployed.