We develop a measure of chronic joblessness among prime-age men and women in the United States - termed the detachment rate - that identifies those who have been out of the labor force for more than a year. We show that the detachment rate more than doubled for men since the early 1980s and rose...

We develop a measure of chronic joblessness among prime-age men and women in the United States - termed the detachment rate - that identifies those who have been out of the labor force for more than a year. We show that the detachment rate more than doubled for men since the early 1980s and rose...