Long-Term Unemployed Cloud the Jobs Picture
New jobs numbers will be released Friday morning, and they are expected to show, at last, some significant creation of new jobs. A cheer will go up at the White House at this sign that the long climb out of the recession's unemployment hole may have begun.</br></br>But any cheering will be tempered by nagging concern over an insidious problem lurking within the numbers: the startling number of Americans who have fallen into the ranks of not just the unemployed, but the long-term unemployed.</br></br>The numbers of long-term unemployed--defined as those unable to find a job for six months or longer--are swelling because of the peculiar causes and character of this deep recession. The consequences are troubling: The long-term unemployed tend to be particularly hard to get back into jobs, and they generate their own set of social problems along the way.</br></br>President Barack Obama and his team are particularly worried about the phenomenon, and have set out to find ways to combat it. But they're finding policy prescriptions limited by politics and money.</br></br>Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tell the grim story. The number of long-term unemployed in February rose to more than six million, fully double the number in the same month one year earlier.