Average duration of US, Canadian and Australian unemployment since 1968

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Data extracted on 10 Oct 2016 05:17 UTC (GMT) from OECD.Stat.

More than 15% of unemployed Europeans haven’t had a job for more than four years

Incidence of long-term unemployment in the PIGS since 1983

The boom that preceded the bust in the Greek economy did nothing for the rate of long-term unemployment among Greeks. Long-term unemployment had been pretty stable prior to the economic boom after joining the euro currency union.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Nothing much happened to long-term unemployment in Italy or Portugal in recent decades. Spanish long-term unemployment fell in line with the economic boom in Spain over the 1980s and 1990s up until the global financial crisis.

% of unemployment that is more than 12 months, USA, UK, Germany and France

As the British labour market and long-term unemployment was starting to get something like that in the USA, the USA started to have unemployment it was more like the European labour markets in terms of the number of long-term unemployed. Nothing much happened in Germany and France.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Italian unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

Unemployment of more than a year was slowly tapering down in Italy before the global financial crisis, but ever so slowly.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

German unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

German long term unemployment has been pretty stable albeit with an up-and-down after German unification. There is also a fall in long-term unemployment after some labour market reforms around 2005.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

New Zealand unemployment incidence by duration since 1986

There has been bit of a wild ride in long-term unemployment in New Zealand. Long-term unemployment – longer than one year – ranging from just over 8% of unemployment in 1986 to nearly 40% in 1992 then down to 5% in 2008. Clearly the duration of unemployment in New Zealand is highly sensitive to the business cycle unlike the case in the USA or UK.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

This sensitivity of long-term unemployment to the business cycle does not bode well for the hypothesis of hysteresis where human capital depreciates the longer a jobseeker is out of employment. For this hypothesis to hold, there must be some enduring aspect of long-term unemployment rather than just going up and down with the business cycle rather noticeably.

The rival hypothesis to hysteresis is the long-term unemployed tend to be those who have a lot of trouble getting employment, which is why they end up been unemployed for a long time. Again in New Zealand, these less employable jobseekers appear to be able to find jobs quite easily when the labour market is good.

British unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

In contrast to the USA, there is been a long-term decline in long-term unemployment, that is unemployment of more than a year, in the British economy over the 1990s. The situation then stabilised and then increased after the global financial crisis. There is also a rather rapid fall in long-term unemployment in the mid-1980s as the British economy recovered under Thatchernomics

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

This time it is different: unemployment incidence by duration, USA, 1968 – 2014

The Great Recession was the first recession in the USA in a good 40 to 50 years where the composition of employment changed by much. Even the big recession at the beginning of the 1980s did not do much to the composition of unemployment by duration in the USA.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

Those unemployed for more than a year moved from barely double digits even in a bad recession prior to 2008 to coming on one-third of all unemployed. Likewise, those unemployed for less than a month halved from 40% to 20%. Something changed in the US labour market with the Great Recession and the long extensions of unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 52 weeks and then 99 weeks.

Australian unemployment incidence by duration since 1978

As with New Zealand, Australian long-term unemployment seems to go up and down quite a lot with recessions such as those in the early 1980s and early 1990s but not after the global financial crisis.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

French unemployment incidence by duration since 1983

Nothing really changes in France recently unemployment duration. Italian labour market is notorious for having very low inflows and outflows from employment and unemployment.

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Source: OECD StatExtract.

There were large cross-country differences in long-term unemployment duration both before and after the GFC

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