The latest recession was different from other postwar recessions. One striking feature is how the various durations of unemployment have changed. The fraction of long-term unemployed (>26 weeks) had never been the largest. But now it is the largest by far! Until now, the fraction of short-term unemployed (<5 weeks) has always been the largest. Now it’s second or even third. What’s so peculiar about this recession? Is this a new regime? To truly answer these questions, we most likely have to wait for new data to come in. FRED offers various tools to stay connected. 1. You can create a dashboard that allows you to track statistics. 2. You can place a widget on your web page that reveals the latest data for up to six series. 3. You can subscribe to email alerts for the latest updates of you favorite series. 4. You can put the relevant series in an Excel spreadsheet and refresh the data with a single click (thanks to our Excel add-in). 5. You can come back to this blog post from time to time, and its graph will automatically update with the latest data.

How this graph was created: Find the release table for unemployed persons by duration of unemployment, select the four relevant series at the bottom, and add them to the graph.

Suggested by George Essig