One in three unemployed persons in the EU have been jobless for over a year

While there is hope of economic recovery as output starts growing again, the effects of the crisis on the European labour market are far from over. In 2009Q3, the ranks of the unemployed increased to around 21.4 million in the EU. Many of them lost their job in the previous 12 months. But with fewer jobs on offer, the risk of staying unemployed for over a year is real for a substantial number of people. This could result in more social exclusion and poverty. Recent data (third quarter of 2009) from the European Labour Force Survey (LFS) are used to analyse unemployment in the different population groups in terms of duration. The data are supplemented by seasonally adjusted monthly data on unemployment and quarterly data on job vacancies, to give a more complete picture. This publication is the third in a series analysing the effects of the current economic crisis on the labour market in Europe.