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While the U.S. economy has added more than 2 million jobs over the past year, a growing number of those out of work are having difficulty rejoining the workforce, The Wall Street Journal reports.
As of November, more than 7 million Americans were unemployed—more than 1.6 million of those jobless workers had been job hunting for at least six months, according to the Labor Department.
On average, it now takes people about six months to find a job, roughly a month longer than it did during the post-pandemic hiring boom in early 2023, according to the Labor Department. That pain is felt largely in high-paying white-collar jobs, including in tech, law and media, where businesses grew fast when the economy initially reopened but now have less need for new hires.
The figures indicate that the labor market that looks healthy in the headlines is, under the surface, weaker than it seems. While the unemployment rate, at 4.2%, remains well below the average during the decade before the pandemic, there is now just about one job posting per unemployed worker, down from two in early 2022.
