就業(yè)問題仍考驗著美國的經(jīng)濟

In July, the labor market blew past economists’ expectations, adding 255,000 new jobs after posting an equally impressive gain of 292,000 in June.

But even though the labor market is producing more than enough jobs to keep up with population growth, and the unemployment rate is sitting below 5%, the August employment situation report wasn’t without its bad news. According to the Labor Department, the number of long-term unemployed—defined as those who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more— actually rose in July by 41,000, to more than 2 million. The following chart shows the trend in long-term unemployment:

As you can see, not only are about as many long-term unemployed today as there were at the worst of the previous recession, there has been much less progress in bringing this number down of late than earlier in the recovery. An even more sobering statistic is that the share of the total unemployed who have been jobless for more than 27 weeks remains over 26%.

These statistics are examples of data that Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve look at when trying to determine the health of the labor market, and trying to determine whether to raise interest rates. Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is roughly where economists estimate full employment to be, these data show parts of the labor market that are still struggling.

Unfortunately, there’s little reason to believe that this problem will be solved without extraordinary government intervention. As economists Vincent and Carmen Reinhart?have shown in their research on financial crises, labor markets take a very long time, longer than 10 years, to recover from these disruptive events. That’s because when workers are thrown out of work for extended periods of time, their skills and overall employability deteriorate, a phenomenon economists call hysteresis.

Phenomena like these may help explain why so many voters are still feeling uneasy about the economy even as the official unemployment rate has returned to the levels we were used to before the crisis.

參考譯文：

7月美國就業(yè)數(shù)據(jù)遠超經(jīng)濟學(xué)家預(yù)期，繼6月驚人地新增崗位29.2萬個之后，再增25.5萬個工作崗位。

但即便就業(yè)市場新增的工作崗位跟上了人口增速，失業(yè)率也低于5%，8月的就業(yè)報告并非形勢一片大好。據(jù)美國勞工部公布，長期失業(yè)數(shù)據(jù)——失業(yè)至少27周的勞動力7月實際上增加了4.1萬人，人數(shù)突破200萬。

目前的長期失業(yè)人數(shù)和此前經(jīng)濟衰退期最低谷時的不相上下。而且比起經(jīng)濟復(fù)蘇初期，美國在減少長期失業(yè)者方面的工作進展不大。更值得警惕的數(shù)據(jù)是，失業(yè)27周以上的失業(yè)者占比仍超過26%。

這些數(shù)據(jù)都是美聯(lián)儲主席珍妮特·耶倫和相關(guān)官員判斷就業(yè)市場形勢，以及是否要加息時參考的依據(jù)。雖然據(jù)經(jīng)濟學(xué)家預(yù)期，當前就業(yè)率實現(xiàn)充分就業(yè)，但上述數(shù)據(jù)顯示，勞動力市場有些方面仍面臨困境。

可惜沒有證據(jù)能證明，除了政府大力干預(yù)還有別的解決之道。正如經(jīng)濟學(xué)家文森特和卡門·萊因哈特在金融危機的論著中揭示的，就業(yè)市場經(jīng)歷危機后若要恢復(fù)元氣，至少需要10年時間。因為勞動者如果失業(yè)時間過長，掌握的技能和再就業(yè)能力會出現(xiàn)退化。經(jīng)濟學(xué)家將這一現(xiàn)象稱為滯后效應(yīng)。

總之，這些現(xiàn)象或許可以解釋，為何官方失業(yè)率明明已經(jīng)回升到危機前的水平，許多美國選民卻仍然擔心經(jīng)濟前景。