In March of this year, about 85,000 jobless individuals per week exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits - more than double the 35,000 per week in September 2000. Moreover, the average duration of unemployment increased from twelve weeks in September 2000 to twenty weeks in March of this year. These developments have led to a notable rise in insecurity among workers.
Most of the recent increases in productivity have been reflected in a sharp rise in the pretax profits of nonfinancial corporations from a very low 7 percent share of that sector’s gross value added in the third quarter of 2001 to a high 12 percent share in the fourth quarter of last year.