The plight of the long-term unemployed has been one of the dominant narratives of the jobs recovery — and rightly so, as an unusually high number of Americans have been out of work for 6 months or longer. But the Wall Street Journal's Sudeep Reddy today tweeted about what it means that there's also an unusually low number of short-term unemployed Americans.
Short-term joblessness is far below its long-run average. Long-term unemployment is far above. http://t.co/Kwbq3JzEu8 pic.twitter.com/3OUU0HSCtk
— Sudeep Reddy (@Reddy) November 7, 2014
And that might mean good things for workers' paychecks. The Journal's Eric Morath writes that the relatively tight labor market for short-term unemployed people might mean that finally, wages will start to tick upward meaningfully. Which would of course be great news for the short-term jobless and everyone currently working...but still doesn't solve the problem of having 3 million long-term unemployed people.