U.S. unemployment is currently close to nine percent.

A recent Time Magazine article reported that companies won’t hire or even consider hiring employees if they are currently unemployed.

“There are a large number of companies that have a lot of slack in their current workforce,” said David Swenson, associate scientist of economics. “That means that there are lots of otherwise productive employees that aren’t working as many hours as they’d like to.”

Swenson said firms will bring back their laid-off workers, since they are already trained and will be productive in the workforce right away.

“The fact that firms are expressing a preference for people already working, I think, is a red herring,” Swenson said. “There is always a certain amount of job turnover regardless of a recession, and for firms looking to fill key positions, an already-working candidate may very well possess the skills needed by the hiring firm.”

Market firms can directly affect the value of a service.

“In a market flush with labor, a new firm can make a bid to steal talent from existing firms,” Swenson said. “That’s called competition. It happens all the time.”

The longer someone is unemployed, the more their chance of becoming employed declines.

“I think that what we do find is that the longer people are unemployed there tends to be some stigma attached to them,” said Peter Orazem, university professor of economics. “Some people who are unemployed aren’t eager to seek employment.”

People who are unemployed can use that circumstance to their advantage when they are searching for a job.

“As long as you claim to be seeking employment, you can drag out your unemployment benefits for a longer time,” Orazem said. “Some of the reduced probability is based on the job seeker and not the firm itself.”

The period of time a person spends job shopping depends on the strength of the labor market.

“It’s easier when the labor market is strong,” Orazem said. “When it’s weak, job shopping decreases and the likelihood of being laid off increases.”

According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average amount of time a job-seeker was unemployed was about 10 weeks. Before the recession in 2007, it was seven weeks.

It is expected that as the economy recovers, firms will start adding new employees.

“Those workers must come from the ranks of the unemployed for net employment to increase,” Swenson said. “If the economy is expanding and jobs are being created, then those jobs must be filled, in the main, by persons who are not already working.”

A 2010 survey of alumni who recieved bachelor’s degrees in 2008 and 2009 polled 3,471 people about their employment status. 68.6 percent of them said they were employed and 7.9 percent said they were seeking employment.