Duration of Joblessness and Long-term Unemployment: Is Duration as Long as Official Statistics Say?

This article provides an in-depth analysis of duration statistics based on cross-sectional information and compares these statistics with others based on longitudinal data. The objective is to challenge the vision conveyed by conventional data on the incomplete duration of spells of unemployment. We interpret our results as indicating that this sort of information offers a poor guide in countries where labour turnover is large, as is the case in the Spanish labour market. Therefore it should not be used (at least, not alone) to inform policymakers’ decisions and economists’ theoretical works.