The Financial Times reports noting that U.S. long-term unemployment had hit a four-year high. Now it takes an average of more than 11 weeks for an unemployed person to find a new job in today’s job market, the longest time since 2021. The 70,000 new jobs predicted by economists for December ended up being much less, only 50,000.
The group of job-seekers classified as long-term unemployed, having been looking for work for longer than 27 weeks, grew by 26% in 2025. The retail sector lost 25,000 jobs in December, while employment in manufacturing dropped by 8,000 jobs and tens of thousands of positions in manufacturing have disappeared since December 2024, reports the New York Times.
