While the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7% in March, the long-term unemployment situation deteriorated. In March, an additional 414,000 unemployed workers crossed the six-months-unemployed threshold, so that now there are 6.5 million workers who have been unemployed for longer than six months. The average unemployment spell was 31.2 weeks and the median unemployment spell was 20 weeks, and 44.1% of all unemployed workers had been unemployed for more than six months. –Heidi Shierholz