One of the best indications that the U.S. labor market has roughly returned to normal seven years after the recession’s end is that more workers who lose a job are able to find a new one. Between January twenty thirteen and December twenty fifteen, about seven point four million people lost their jobs, including more than three million who were laid off from positions that they had held for at least three years.
Among those long-tenured workers who were laid off over this period, approximately two in three had found replacement employment by January twenty sixteen. About one in six were still unemployment and about one in five had left the workforce altogether. That’s much better than during the recession years of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, and two thousand and nine.
Many long-tenured workers were laid off during that period of course, and fewer than half had secured replacement employment by January two thousand and ten. As indicated by the Wall Street Journal, though the reemployment rate today is much higher than it was several years ago, it still remains below the seventy percent level that is associated with workers who had been displaced between two thousand and three and two thousand and five.
