According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the percentage of people who had been jobless for 27 or more weeks was 11% in 2000 and 42% in November 2009. It was defined as long-term unemployment. The average duration of unemployment was 29.4 weeks in November 2009 and 34.5 weeks in November 2010. The BLS has increased the upper limit on joblessness from 2 to 5 years because a lot of people had been unemployed for more than 99 weeks.
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