Amid stories of service industry businesses giving workers raises, sign-on bonuses, and other benefits to increase hiring, there remains a large part of the population that is still unemployed and has been for a long time. According to a July 2021 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 40% of unemployed people were “long-term unemployed,” meaning they have been without a job for a year or more.

The trend of long-term unemployment began after the Great Recession in 2008 and grew substantially during the early days of the pandemic last spring. Extended unemployment benefits, concerns about contracting COVID-19, and changing family caregiving obligations are a few of the reasons why people might be hesitant about returning to the workforce.

Robard Williams, a senior vice president at Moody’s, pointed to another reason in a recent interview with CNBC.

“The longer they’re out of a job, the harder it is to find a new one,” Williams said. “That holds in this period, as well as in good times.”

As unemployment benefits end and schools reopen this fall, economists hope that at least some of those workers will resume their job searches in the coming months. Employers need to be ready for this and address unemployment bias before it becomes an issue in the hiring process.

What Is Unemployment Bias?

Forbes contributor Jack Kelly summed up unemployment bias well in a 2019 article on the topic. He wrote:

“There is a discrete, unspoken thought process amongst corporate executives that if someone is unemployed for a certain length of time, there must be a problem and they’d rather just pass on the candidate. An unrealistic expectation exists in which hiring managers feel that a person should have found a job within a reasonable time frame after being unemployed—and if they haven’t, something may be wrong with him.”

Have those thoughts ever gone through your mind as you’re reviewing applications or come up during hiring committee meetings? Whether you want to admit it or not, the answer is probably “yes.”

Americans place a lot of value on work and career as part of a person’s identity, so it’s only natural that these thoughts come up when considering a candidate who has been out of work for a while. The key is to recognize this pattern when it happens and take conscious steps to get yourself out of it.

Unemployment bias is also linked to age bias, with unemployed older workers having a more difficult time finding a job than their younger counterparts.

“An older person would probably not have energy and enough learning ability to compete with young people,” one recruiter told the Harvard Business Review.

The age bias is particularly prevalent for women who are returning to the workforce after taking long breaks to raise their families.

“Nearly half of this population are considered long-term unemployed, which means they’ll be out of work for six months or longer,” AARP’s Susan Weinstock told the New York Post. “The Great Recession [in 2008] taught us that it will take them double the time to find a new job as it does for a younger person, and they probably won’t make the salary they made when they were pushed out of the workforce.”

How to Combat Unemployment Bias at Your Organization

Just because you might have fostered unemployment bias in the past does not mean you need to continue down that path. There are several actions you can begin taking now to ensure a fairer evaluation of future candidates.

One strategy is to de-emphasize the value you place on networking as part of the job search. Networking becomes more difficult to do the longer someone is unemployed. People begin to feel shame about not being able to find a job and don’t want to attend networking events where they’ll have to repeat their stories over and over again.

Given the difficulties of networking, long-term unemployed people are more likely to submit cold applications online. While it’s tempting to discount these applications in favor of recommendations from colleagues, remember that the playing field for obtaining those recommendations is far from equal.

It’s also important to remember that long-term unemployment is not always the candidate’s choice, particularly in the COVID-19 era. Stereotypes about unemployed people sitting on the couch all day persist in our culture, but the reality for many people is that they are not working because they can’t, rather than because they don’t want to.

Overcoming these stereotypes in your own mind requires empathy and putting yourself in the candidate’s shoes, rather than looking at their application through your own lens. Before rejecting an application because of a long unemployment, think about the reasons why the person might have been unemployed and if it’s worth talking to the candidate to get more information before making a final decision.

Finally, when those conversations do occur, be careful not to exacerbate the feelings of shame that a long-term unemployed person already has. Don’t talk about their employment history in a negative context. Instead, focus on learning as much as you can about their skillset and what they can bring to your organization.

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