considering the oecd area as a whole there was a fourquarter lag between the time when the oecd unemployment rate began to rise and the time when the relative incidence of longterm unemployment ie the share of all unemployed that have been jobless for a year or longer began to rise however this lag varied considerably from country to country and is probably affected by both national labour market institutions and practices and the nature of the recessionary shock figure provides information on how the incidence of longterm unemployment changed between the th quarters of and for the workingage population and groups defined by gender age and educational level