Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/31/2010 -- The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has said that it will change the way it counts unemployment beginning in January 2011.

The data collected under the new rules for January will be available in the first week of February. Under the new rules, people will be able to report their unemployment durations for the previous five years. Right now, they can only report it for the previous two years.

The Labor Department, which runs the BLS, has said that it expects to find that the average time to find jobs for unemployed people will go up according to the new methodology. As of November 2010, it takes on average 33.8 weeks for an unemployed person to get work again.

As of December 2010, there were 4.06 million people getting the traditional unemployment benefits, with another 4.67 million getting the extended unemployment benefits. The extended benefits have been repeatedly extended by Congress since the December 2007 financial meltdown. This brings the total to 8.74 million jobless Americans on benefits.

But even this figure excludes the 99ers, people who have been unemployed for over 99 weeks and have exhausted all available federal and state employment benefits. Hound CEO A. Harrison Barnes believes that the economy is recovering slowly and the next year will be better. “We have seen an increase in job postings on employer websites. And with businesses getting back to work in full swing in the next two weeks, I am sure 2011 will be much better than this year.” Hound has been able to find over 65,000 jobs in the last seven days on employer websites.