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

The number of Americans who’ve been unemployed for over 27 weeks hit 1.9 million in August.

9/16/25 10:42AM

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.

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Ahead of Mother’s Day, Google searches for “same day flower delivery” have ticked up a little earlier this year

If you’ve already made plans for a Mother’s Day gift in advance of this Sunday, congratulations. But if alarm bells are suddenly ringing, consider this a gentle reminder that, like a sizable share of the US population this time of year often does, you can still scrape together some last-minute flowers for the woman who carried you for nine months.

Data from Google Trends reveals that searches for “same day flower delivery” spike in the US in May every year, when Mother’s Day takes place. As we noted last February, the same query also gains traction around Valentine’s Day.

This year, however, it appears that searches for last-minute flowers have remained elevated in the last two months after the usual peak in February — with the search interest this April actually exceeding that seen around Cupid’s Day.

Honestly, we’re not sure why searches are spiking a little early. One explanation might be that Passover and Easter have overlapped at the start of April, and Americans wanted to celebrate with some flowers. Maybe it’s a host of Claude bots that are now running errands for AI-obsessed execs — or perhaps Americans are just impulse-buying some seasonal spring blooms after an unusually warm March, without a particular occasion.