Unemployed Americans Endure Longer Job Searches in a Cooling Market

quote:

---

Job seekers are out in the cold this summer. Especially the ones who have been hunting for a while.

Beyond the headline-grabbing top-line numbers in the jobs report for July was another striking piece of data: The number of people unemployed for at least 27 weeks topped 1.8 million, the highest level since 2017, not counting the pandemic’s unemployment surge. The median length of unemployment in the U.S. has also ticked up, from a seasonally adjusted 9.5 weeks in July 2024 to 10.2 weeks last month.

This job-hunting struggle highlights a significant undercurrent in a labor market jolted by tariff uncertainty and cautious businesses. The latest numbers show job growth has been sluggish for months. While the unemployment rate, at 4.2%, remains low by historical standards, companies aren’t hiring much.

The rate of people in jobs or actively looking for work has tumbled to the lowest level since 2022. Economists say lower participation in the labor force is helping to keep the unemployment rate low, but also masking an increasingly dismal climate for job seekers.

---

quote:

---

Lengthy unemployment spells risk, stunting long-term earnings for individual workers and denting retirement savings. A new generation of graduates are struggling to land jobs and find a foothold on the career ladder, in part because artificial intelligence is taking on more entry-level work. Midcareer workers can stall in current jobs rather than climbing and improving their earnings.

---

quote:

---

Friday’s jobs report from the Labor Department showed softer than expected hiring in July as well as sharp revisions that slashed the number of jobs created in the prior two months.

Those more than 1.8 million people who have been job hunting for at least 27 weeks now represent a quarter of unemployed people, the report says. A year ago those long-term job seekers were closer to one in five unemployed people. Job openings and hires both ticked down slightly in June, although another recent report showed that layoffs remained at a low level.

---