The president paints a rosy economic picture, and in many ways, he's right to do that. The stock market is up and unemployment is down — at its lowest level since before the financial crash. But there's another important metric that's often overlooked.

That's long-term unemployment. The percentage of the unemployed who've been jobless for 27 weeks or longer is way up. That's bad both for those unemployed workers and for the economy as a whole, but it's rarely talked about.

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(Photo Illustration: Philip Robibero / AJC | Source: Getty, Unsplash)

Credit: Philip Robibero / AJC