The American workforce seethes with a continuous change. Apart from relatively brief recessions, it expands and becomes ever more complex. It has done so continuously for 400 years. Although the labor market often seems basically stable, with most people working while the poor and unemployed struggle at the margins, in fact the markets constantly churn as millions change their job status every month.
As a result, monthly unemployment reports never represent the same group of people twice, although the rates may remain the same. Even during a recession millions of people get jobs, and during a recovery millions of people lose their jobs. In recent years, BLS has found that half of the unemployed remain so for less than three months; only about one in ten remain unemployed for more than a year.
