Chronic or long-term unemployment describes people that have been out of work for over 27 weeks. During the peak of the recession in January of 2010, the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the unemployment rate had reached 9.8 percent, which is very different from the 4.7 percent of 2006. In 2015, the BLS confirmed that 26.6 percent of unemployed fit in the long-term category. Though it has been significantly falling since then, the explosion of unemployment made this a very important deviant action that needed to be controlled according to the general population. The claim was that people were not looking for jobs, but instead mooching off the welfare program and living easier lives than the average American for it. Durkheim would use anomie to describe that society cannot effectively regulate expectations and behaviors, so aspirations develop beyond the possibility of fulfillment. …show more content…
Durkheim and Merton used their expertise to provide this opportunity to look behind the scenes of what are actually leading up to deviant behavior. Using this opportunity, the next logical step would be to start taking actions during this time before the deviant behavior to prevent individuals from feeling prone to commit these