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Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that the unemployment rate was considerably higher in 1980 (the first year of the early 1980s downturn) than in 2008 (the first year of our slump). It’s a fair point. He then uses it to disagree with me and to suggest that 2010 is likely to look as bad as 1982 on another job-market measure: the share of workers that are unemployed at any point during the year.
I would surprised if this ends up being the case. The average unemployment rates for 1982 and 2010 are indeed likely to be similar, both in the range of 9.7 percent. But joblessness looked very different then than it does now. Today, it tends to last much longer.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
The median duration of unemployment was about nine weeks in 1982. So far this year, it has been more than 20 weeks. B