就业问题仍考验着美国的经济

In July, the labor market blew past economists’ expectations, adding 255,000 new jobs after posting an equally impressive gain of 292,000 in June.

But even though the labor market is producing more than enough jobs to keep up with population growth, and the unemployment rate is sitting below 5%, the August employment situation report wasn’t without its bad news. According to the Labor Department, the number of long-term unemployed—defined as those who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more— actually rose in July by 41,000, to more than 2 million. The following chart shows the trend in long-term unemployment:

As you can see, not only are about as many long-term unemployed today as there were at the worst of the previous recession, there has been much less progress in bringing this number down of late than earlier in the recovery. An even more sobering statistic is that the share of the total unemployed who have been jobless for more than 27 weeks remains over 26%.

These statistics are examples of data that Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve look at when trying to determine the health of the labor market, and trying to determine whether to raise interest rates. Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is roughly where economists estimate full employment to be, these data show parts of the labor market that are still struggling.

Unfortunately, there’s little reason to believe that this problem will be solved without extraordinary government intervention. As economists Vincent and Carmen Reinhart?have shown in their research on financial crises, labor markets take a very long time, longer than 10 years, to recover from these disruptive events. That’s because when workers are thrown out of work for extended periods of time, their skills and overall employability deteriorate, a phenomenon economists call hysteresis.

Phenomena like these may help explain why so many voters are still feeling uneasy about the economy even as the official unemployment rate has returned to the levels we were used to before the crisis.

参考译文：

7月美国就业数据远超经济学家预期，继6月惊人地新增岗位29.2万个之后，再增25.5万个工作岗位。

但即便就业市场新增的工作岗位跟上了人口增速，失业率也低于5%，8月的就业报告并非形势一片大好。据美国劳工部公布，长期失业数据——失业至少27周的劳动力7月实际上增加了4.1万人，人数突破200万。

目前的长期失业人数和此前经济衰退期最低谷时的不相上下。而且比起经济复苏初期，美国在减少长期失业者方面的工作进展不大。更值得警惕的数据是，失业27周以上的失业者占比仍超过26%。

这些数据都是美联储主席珍妮特·耶伦和相关官员判断就业市场形势，以及是否要加息时参考的依据。虽然据经济学家预期，当前就业率实现充分就业，但上述数据显示，劳动力市场有些方面仍面临困境。

可惜没有证据能证明，除了政府大力干预还有别的解决之道。正如经济学家文森特和卡门·莱因哈特在金融危机的论著中揭示的，就业市场经历危机后若要恢复元气，至少需要10年时间。因为劳动者如果失业时间过长，掌握的技能和再就业能力会出现退化。经济学家将这一现象称为滞后效应。

总之，这些现象或许可以解释，为何官方失业率明明已经回升到危机前的水平，许多美国选民却仍然担心经济前景。