Thread by @bencasselman

The U.S. economy is facing a tidal wave of long-term unemployment as millions of people who lost jobs early in the pandemic remain out of work six months later and job losses increasingly turn permanent.

With @jeannasmialek @gillianreporter
nytimes.com/2020/10/03/bus…

Already, 2.4 million Americans have been out of work more than six months. Nearly 5 million more will join their ranks in the next couple months if they don't find jobs first. And history shows many of them will struggle to find jobs even when the economy recovers.

Meanwhile, a growing share of job losses are permanent rather than temporary, a sign that we are entering a new, slower phase of the recovery, with more lasting damage.
More on that from @Neil_Irwin here: nytimes.com/2020/10/03/ups…

One note of caution: This is a very different recession, and it's possible that employers won't hold spells of unemployment against workers the way they have in the past.

As @JayCShambaugh says, it's not clear that a restaurant that reopens now is going to say to a potential line cook, "Hey, why haven't you been working for the past six months?"

But the more this morphs into a more traditional recession, rather than a pandemic-induced pause, the more we would expect scarring effects to show up. Which is one reason many economists are pushing so hard to avoid letting it get to that point.