Long-term unemployment in the US has risen to a postpandemic high

Following a series of weak jobs reports and ongoing revisions turmoil, the number of Americans who’ve been unemployed for more than six months is now at the highest level since the pandemic.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released employment data for August, which reported that 1.9 million people in the US were long-term unemployed (jobless for 27-plus weeks) — almost double the number of people recorded in early 2023.

Currently, those facing a prolonged workless stretch account for about a quarter of unemployed people (25.7%). Going back to 1950, the long-term unemployment rate has exceeded 25% only during times of serious economic turmoil — and always following a recession. The all-time high of some 7 million unemployed Americans was seen after the global financial crisis of 2008.

As noted by The Washington Post, the six-month mark typically denotes a turning point in the course of someone’s job search, when they’ve likely run out of unemployment insurance benefits and severance payments. Long-term joblessness can also be more structurally damaging to the economy, and often affects individuals’ skills, confidence, employability, and sometimes even health.

In the absence of a recession, what we seem to be seeing in 2025 is a cooling labor market coinciding with a hiring freeze for a growing cohort of job-seekers.

Apply and demand

The US job market has been in “hire less, fire less” mode for some time. But what’s surprising is that the lack of growth is disproportionately affecting a demographic that previously would have been considered highly employable: college graduates.

Indeed, the share of long-term unemployed people with a college degree has grown from roughly a fifth a decade ago to one-third today, according to data cited by The New York Times. Blame AI, maybe.