Particularly concerning is the very high level of long-term unemployment – nearly half of the unemployed have been jobless for more than six months. People without work for long periods can find it increasingly difficult to obtain a job comparable to their previous one, as their skills tend to deteriorate over time and as employers are often reluctant to hire the longterm unemployed.
Indeed, several factors suggested that the present situation was more worrying than past episodes of oil-induced disinflation, particularly the most recent case in 2009 following the collapse of Lehman brothers. First, the persistence of low inflation across a range of statistical metrics was higher than in 2009.