Americans are not only losing their jobs during the pandemic but also having a lot of trouble finding new ones, as, over the past few months, growing numbers have transitioned out of the short-term unemployed category and into more dire territory, according to the Wall Street Journal. The number of those who have been unemployed for a period between 15 and 26 weeks has increased by 4.6 million to 6.5 million over just a month, with July being the highest figure since 1948; that figure is nearly double what it was in 2009, the height of the last financial crisis. This implies that many of the job losses the country has been seeing since the start of the pandemic are not temporary layoffs but genuine firings that are forcing people to find new work.

Once worker are unemployed for 15 weeks or more, they are no longer considered short-term unemployed, but it takes six months or more for workers to be considered long-term unemployed. The number of workers with the long-term unemployed classification, while below the number found during the Great Recession, are nonetheless growing too: 1.1 million in February has turned into 1.5 million in July.

The Journal noted that the longer someone goes without a job, the harder it becomes to get a new one. The growing numbers of those with difficulty in finding a new job suggest the sort of long-term economic scarring warned about by Federal Reserve officials.