Some 4 Million Americans Have Been Unemployed For Half A Year

Almost four million Americans have been out of work for at least six months because of the pandemic, CNN reported.

The grim stats are an increase from September when 2.4 million had been out of work since around the start of the pandemic last March. The full number of workers who have been unemployed for six months is now 37 percent of the total jobless population, according to CNN.

The issue with such long-term unemployment is that the longer one goes without a job, the harder it is to re-enter the labor force with skill or experience gaps from waiting so long.

“They’re stuck, and they start to face discrimination,” said William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and chief economist at the AFL-CIO, according to the report. “Employers believe they are damaged goods.”

CNN reported that the difficulty hits both higher- and lower-skilled workers, with some of the longer terms being for management, professional and sales jobs.

According to stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just over half of the long-term unemployed have come from the leisure and hospitality sectors, which make up a quarter of the group, along with education and health services and wholesale and retail trade, CNN reported.

Among Black and Asian Americans who’ve been unemployed, CNN reported that over 40 percent have been jobless for at least half a year, according to the data, while White and Hispanic Americans make up around one third. And women are slightly more likely to be unemployed than men for long periods of time, especially among those aged 25 to 44. The reverse is true once the age group gets to 45 to 64.

PYMNTS reported that the non-farm payrolls fell in December by 140,000 jobs, which was a reverse from the expected 50,000 gains. That comes from the pandemic’s continued effect on the kinds of businesses that need foot traffic in order to survive, including leisure and hospitality jobs. There were 498,000 jobs in that sector lost in December, including 372,000 food service jobs and 24,000 hospitality jobs.