Abstract
The objective of this paper is to introduce a new measure of the average duration of unemployment spells using Canadian data. The paper summarizes the work of Corak (1993) and Corak and Heisz (1994) on the average complete duration of unemployment in a non-technical way by focusing on the distinction between it and the average incomplete duration of unemployment, which is regularly released by Statistics Canada. It is pointed out that the latter is a lagging cyclical indicator. The average complete duration of unemployment is a more accurate indicator of prevailing labor market conditions, but some assumptions required in its derivation also imply that it lags actual developments.
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