Unemployment Short and Rare

Nice article and supporting graphs/charts at Mark Perry's Carpe Diem site showing how high unemployment is not only rare, but usually occurs for a short amount of time. Given that unemployment is at 5.1%, below the 50-year long-run average of 5.9%, it is still not time to panic. Next Friday's job numbers may tell a different story, but for now unemployment appears relatively contained. Furthermore, the median duration of unemployment is currently at 8.1 weeks, or about 2 months, with over 2/3rd of unemployed workers out less than 14 weeks. Of course, if you are unemployed, this may be encouraging, but of little consolation, especially when we continue to hear daily about how bad the situation is.