Issues in Labor Statistics: How Long Before the Unemployed Find Jobs or Quit Looking. Summary 11-1.

摘要

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes duration-of-unemployment measures derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS). These measures include the average and median number of weeks that the jobless have been searching for work, as well as the number of unemployed persons by defined categories ranging from less than 5 weeks to 52 weeks or more. Analysts and news reports have frequently associated the mean or median duration measure with the length of time it takes jobseekers to find employment. However, the published data represent the current duration of unemployment and are not measures of completed periods of job search. This brief report presents estimates of the length of time someone is unemployed before finding a job or before giving up searching for work. These measures were derived from the CPS labor force status flow data, which capture the extent to which the unemployed find jobs, leave the labor force, or stay unemployed from one month to the next.