March 8, 2011 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Duration of unemployment in February 2011
In February, 43.9 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. This group made up 43.8 percent of unemployed persons in January. In February 2010, 41.0 percent of the unemployed had been jobless for 27 weeks or longer.
![Duration of unemployment, percent distribution, January 2007–February 2011](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925053448im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2011/ted_20110308.png)
[Chart data]
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was 6.0 million in February 2011.
The total number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) and the unemployment rate (8.9 percent) changed little in February.
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.7 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (23.9 percent), whites (8.0 percent), blacks (15.3 percent), and Hispanics (11.6 percent) showed little or no change in February.
These data are from the Current Population Survey and are seasonally adjusted. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation — February 2011," (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-0271.
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