Friday, March 4, 2011

Unemployment Just under 9%

Bureau of Labor Statistics logo RGB colors.Image via Wikipedia
The summary of the monthly employment situation report is that the unemployment rate fell to 8.9% and the economy added 192,000 jobs. That means the economy is moving in the right direction; however, the underlying details are more sobering.

Marginally attached workers rose from 2.5 million a year ago to 2.7 million (empsit.pdf link will break in a month). Obviously, that's bad, but there were signs of improvement even among marginally attached workers. The number of discouraged workers, a component of marginally attached workers, decreased by 187,000 to 1 million from the year ago number.

The Employment Situation Report also noted that the labor force participation rate and employment-population ratio had not changed:
Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the employment-population
ratio, at 58.4 percent, were unchanged in February.

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