WASHINGTON — When the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this month the preliminary results of its annual revision to job gains, it revealed employers added almost a million fewer jobs in the year leading up to March.
The so-called “benchmark revision” shifted policymakers’ understanding of the economy, but it was no surprise to Paulina Drake. She’s a mortgage underwriter in Los Angeles who’s been unemployed since 2022.
“I’ve been doing this all my life, but the last couple of years have been really different,” Drake told HuffPost.
She’s one of 1.9 million Americans who’ve been unemployed longer than six months, according to the BLS, a population that’s grown as the labor market has softened. Of the 7.3 million people who were unemployed in August, 25.7% had been jobless for at least 26 weeks.
The past few months have seen a marked slowdown in job creation, including the first month of net job losses since the coronavirus pandemic. While the unemployment rate has risen only modestly, the rising share of long-term unemployed among the broader unemployed population, along with higher unemployment for new workers and minorities, are hallmarks of a weakening labor market and a warning of increasing recession risk.
