Unemployment Number By The Duration

This is not your ordinary recession.

The graph below shows the number of people unemployed by the duration of unemployment. It was created at St. Louis Fed's FRED site. Shaded areas indicate recessions.

The spiking blue line is the number of civilians unemployed for 15 weeks and over. For the first time since 1980s, people out of work for 15 weeks and over zipped past people out of work for less than 15 weeks. And it happened early on in the recession.

In the recession in early 80's, people out of work for 15 weeks and over didn't surpass the other two categories until at the very end of the recession. In early 90's and 2000's, the blue line never went above the other two lines until after the recessions were over.



A sudden, spectacularly huge spike like this reminds me of other data like bank excess reserve, and monetary base. Another indication that this recession is "credit-driven". Debt-driven is probably more apt description, though.

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