Out of Work Out of Work  
FOR THE unemployed, even short recessions have long tails. That useful reminder is contained in a new report on the likely effects of the current recession, which the administration and most other forecasters have said will be pleasantly brief and mild.</br></br>The report, by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities here,.-observes that the end of a recession is not quite the joyous moment the term implies. The end is a trough, the point at which business activity stops declining, not the point at which the economy regains its former health.</br></br>Unemployment thus tends to stay high long after a recession is officially over; the administrationÛªs own economic forecast includes such an expectation. The recession is said to be likely to end about the middle of this year, but the unemployment rate would stay closer to 7 than to 6 percent until well into 1992; for fiscal 1992 rt would average 6.7 percent.</br></br>By recent historical standards that rate wouild not he exceptionally high, but it still represents close to 2 million people more than were unemployed last year. That is not a dismissable number, especially because this recession, for all the eight years of vaunted expansion that preceded it, began with the poverty rate and other signals of distress in the lower reaches of the economy already uncomfortably high. The question is whether the safety net is adequate to the burden about to be put on it; the answer, particularly as to the unemployment insurance system, ia. no.</br></br>the work force. Partly this reflects changes in the work force, partly budget cuts and changes in federal and state law. A major difference at the federal level is that it takes more to turn on so-called extended benefits beyond the 26 weeks that are the national standard. In a lengthy period of heightened unemployment such as even the optimists agree lies ahead, that means that many more workers will exhaust their benefits. Nor can already overburdened welfare, housing and other such programs be counted on to take up the slack.