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.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »