February 13, 2007 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Length of unemployment, 2005

Overall, 14.5 million persons experienced some unemployment in 2005.

[Chart data—TXT]

About 400,000 of these were persons who worked year round but were unemployed for 1 or 2 weeks.

Of the 11.7 million persons who worked during part of the year and also experienced some unemployment, about 4 million were unemployed for periods ranging from 1 to 10 weeks. About 5 million were unemployed for periods ranging from 11 to 26 weeks. The remaining individuals were unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.

About 2.4 million individuals looked for a job, but did not work at all in 2005.

In 2005, among those who experienced unemployment, the median number of weeks spent looking for work was 14.6; half were unemployed for a shorter period, half for a longer period.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see Work Experience of the Population in 2005 (PDF) (TXT), USDL news release 07-0199.  Data refer to persons 16 years and over.  Time worked includes paid vacation and sick leave.