The US unemployment rate continues to hover under 4%, suggesting the health of the labor market is relatively strong. However, a longer-term trend has been an uptick in the average weeks unemployed. While it has declined dramatically from peak post-financial crisis years, and is also down substantially from the more recent heights of the pandemic, the baseline for average weeks unemployed appears to have trended higher for multiple decades.
Source: Atlanta Federal Reserve, as of April 24, 2024.