>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8599343.stm
>
>[WS:] So the 2008 recession turned out to be a storm in a teacup, after
>all.
There's a link to another story on that page though:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8499693.stm
US jobless numbers hide scale of problem
By John Mervin Business reporter, BBC News, New York
The headline number only reveals a small part of the problem.
An official US unemployment rate that hit 10% last year, and seems set to stay there or thereabouts for months yet, already makes grim reading.
Yet there's growing concern that even that large and unpleasant number doesn't do justice to the size and severity of America's problem with jobs, or the lack thereof.
Dig beneath the headline figure on each monthly jobs report and there are now plenty of other horrors to be found.
Take the problem of long-term unemployment. In the eyes of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which does the counting, the long-term unemployed are people who have been unemployed for more than six months.
They now make up roughly 40% of all unemployed. That's more than six million people who have been out work since last summer at least.
Real deprivation
As America's politicians and media have tried to grasp the full extent of the country's economic problems, they have inevitably looked for comparisons with previous periods of recession and slow growth.
So a common comparison these days is the recession of 1982-83 - that's the last time America grappled with 10% unemployment.
Which means it's chilling to note that it now takes twice as long (more than 20 weeks) as it did in 1982-83 for an unemployed person to find their next job.
Unemployment is always nasty. But it's even worse when it's accompanied not just by stress and anxiety but by real deprivation.
That is the experience of increasing numbers of Americans as unemployment benefits run out before the next job can be found.
Yet even this doesn't do justice to the sheer scale of America's problem.
[...]