It now takes more than 23 weeks on average for an unemployed person in the US to find a new job. For 1 in 4 unemployed people, or 1.8 million Americans, they are still job hunting six months later.  

Long-term unemployment is now at its highest level in three years. That’s not great news for those affected by the layoffs sweeping through companies like Target, Amazon, Nike and Pinterest in the first months of the year. 

As of January 2026, there are 386,000 more long-term unemployed Americans—those who have been looking for jobs for more than 27 weeks—than there were in January 2025. 

How did we get here?

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A “low-hire, low-fire” environment defined much of 2025 and is now carrying over into 2026. While this has kept the unemployment rate historically low, at just over 4% in December, news of corporate layoffs were—and still are—never far from the headlines. 

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that companies slashed more than 108,000 jobs last month, the most since October and the worst January for job cuts since 2009.

U.S. employers added just 181,000 jobs in all of 2025, compared to 1.46 million in 2024. Private employers added 22,000 jobs in January, payroll processor ADP reported last week, again far fewer than economists had predicted. Another upshot of a “low-hire, low-fire” environment—fewer people quitting their jobs, with most opting to sit tight in their roles and ride out a tumultuous economy.

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