Report: Finding a job today takes FOREVER

Bad news for America's fledgling economic recovery, via ABC News' Dan Arnall -- the median period of unemployment is now at a historically high 39.7 weeks:

A new research report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics dug into this trend to offer new details on how long it takes to make the transition from unemployed to employed and found that 11 percent of job seekers took a year or longer to land a new job. Another off-the-chart reading.

Data included in the report shows that between 2000 – 2008 about half of all unemployed people found a job within five weeks. Last year, a little more than a third of jobseekers were able to land a new position in that amount of time.

Aside from so many unemployed, perhaps more concerning is the number of Americans who are chronically unemployed -- the average worker taking just 20 weeks to give up in their search.