South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Rortybomb notes that the causes of the growth in long-term unemployment aren’t particularly mysterious.

There also shouldn’t be any mystery of long-term unemployment either.  Every month the average and median duration of unemployment goes up, reflecting a large share of the unemployed being unemployed longer.  Commentators are surprised.  Right-wing economists come up with all kinds of convoluted theories about how the long-term unemployed are taking a year off to coach junior’s baseball team (instead of suffering high rates of mental illness and suicide from the shock that comes with being out of the workforce for an extended period of time).  But the simple answer is that there was a period in 2009 when the economy shoved 7 million people out of the workforce and then stopped creating jobs.