by Calculated Risk on 2/03/2013 10:20:00 AM

Earlier employment posts:
• January Employment Report: 157,000 Jobs, 7.9% Unemployment Rate
• Employment Report Comments and more Graphs
• All Employment Graphs

A few more employment graphs ...

Duration of Unemployment
This graph shows the duration of unemployment as a percent of the civilian labor force. The graph shows the number of unemployed in four categories: less than 5 week, 6 to 14 weeks, 15 to 26 weeks, and 27 weeks or more.

The general trend is down for all categories, but only the less than 5 weeks is back to normal levels.

The the long term unemployed is at 3.0% of the labor force - and the number (and percent) of long term unemployed remains a serious problem.

Unemployment by Education
This graph shows the unemployment rate by four levels of education (all groups are 25 years and older).

Unfortunately this data only goes back to 1992 and only includes one previous recession (the stock / tech bust in 2001). Clearly education matters with regards to the unemployment rate - and it appears all four groups are generally trending down.

Although education matters for the unemployment rate, it doesn't appear to matter as far as finding new employment (all four categories are only gradually declining).

Note: This says nothing about the quality of jobs - as an example, a college graduate working at minimum wage would be considered "employed".

Diffusion Indexes
This is a little more technical. The BLS diffusion index for total private employment was at 59.6 in January, down from 64.5 in December. For manufacturing, the diffusion index decreased to 48.1, down from 54.9 in December.

Think of this as a measure of how widespread job gains are across industries. The further from 50 (above or below), the more widespread the job losses or gains reported by the BLS. From the BLS:

Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.

Job growth for total private employment was fairly widespread in January, but not as much for manufacturing.  Still the total private diffusion index is at a reasonable level.

Earlier:
• Summary for Week Ending Feb 1st
• Schedule for Week of Feb 3rd