Study Reveals Bleak Reality of Long-Term Unemployed

The situation is even bleaker than it might seem for the 3.8 million Americans classed as long-term unemployed, a new study finds. Only 11% of the long-term unemployed in any given month had found work a year later, according to research from three Princeton University economists, and they are far more likely to drop out of the workforce permanently than to return to full-time employment, the Los Angeles Times reports. The outlook for the long-term unemployed has failed to improve despite short-term unemployment levels returning to pre-recession averages, the AP finds.

The researchers, including Alan Krueger, President Obama's former chief economic adviser, also found that even among the long-term unemployed who found jobs, more than a third ended up jobless within a year, the Washington Post notes. The researchers called for aggressive measures to fix the job market, including "designing effective interventions to prevent the long-term unemployed from receding into the margins of the labor market or withdrawing from the labor force altogether," reports the Wall Street Journal. (More unemployment stories.)