The October unemployment report is yet another disappointment, with not enough jobs to keep up with population growth. The jobs situation has been dismal for 46 months. While the average time being unemployed decreased -2.72% from last month, the length of unemployment is still at record highs.

The average time being unemployed decreased from 40.5 weeks to 39.4 weeks, but last month was a record going back to 1948. That's over 9 months for the average length of unemployment.

People unemployed for 27 weeks or more is now 42.4% of the total unemployed, or 5,876,000 million. This is 3.8% of the labor force who have been out of a job over 6 months and a -5.86% decrease from September.

The below graph is the median time for being unemployed over the last 20 years. This means half, or 50% of the people unemployed, found a new job in this amount of time. This month the median duration, or half, to be out of work decreased -6.31% to 20.8 weeks. That means there is overall lost income by being out of work longer and we haven't even discussed how the new jobs are paying way less and most of the jobs being created are low paying jobs.

There is a vast deviation from the average and the median duration of unemployment. This means there are huge percentages of the unemployed who simply cannot get a break, being out of work for 2, 3, 4 years and cannot land a damn job.

Below is a graph, courtesy of the Saint Louis Federal Reserve, for the unemployment rate of just those unemployed 15 weeks or longer. 57.1% of the people who are officially counted as unemployed have been so 15 weeks or longer, a drop of -4.85%. The number of people unemployed 15 weeks or longer is 7,924,000 or as part of the civilian labor force, 5.14%. Compare this to the official 9.0% unemployment rate. This means that it takes most people who are unemployed almost 4 months or more to find a job...if they do.

Those unemployed from 5 to 14 weeks increased 11.9% from September, to 23.4% of the total unemployed. They make up 2.11% of the total labor force, or 3,250,000 people.

There are 2,694,000 people who are unemployed for less than 5 weeks in October, a -2.81% decline from September. Only 19.4% of those unemployed have been so for 5 weeks or less.

What happens every month with duration, is people move through the time periods to eventually fall off of the count and enter not in the labor force. Below is the graph of those not in the labor force, which only increased 17,000 from September, or no change from last month.

Yet of those not in the labor force wanting a job, that number increased 162,000 to 6,403,000, a 2.6% increase from last month. This is when the non-institutional civilian population increased 198,000 from September. People are clearly falling off of the official unemployment count who need a job. Below is the graph of those not counted as unemployed, who answer the survey question do you want a job, yes. Below is the seasonally adjusted graph of those not in the labor force, reporting they want a job, as a percentage of the non-institutional civilian population.

Those who want a job, as a percentage of not in the labor force, increased from 7.25% to 7.44% in October. As a percentage of the total civilian non-institutional population, this group is 2.67%. That's pretty huge considering the unemployment rate is 9% and the ratio of those considered part of the labor force to the total non-institutional civilian population is 64.2%.

Here's last month's overview on unemployment by duration.