The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its employment situation report for January on Feb. 1. The report terms the data from the month as "essentially unchanged" from Dec. 2012. The January unemployment rate was 7.9 percent. The number of those unemployed increased by 126,000 people, to 12,332,000. That is the highest number of unemployed Americans since August.
The number of employed Americans increased in January by 17,000, to 143,322,000. The last time that this many workers were employed was Dec. 2008. The labor force, those working or wanting to work, increased by 143,000 for the month.
Those Americans unemployed for over 27 weeks represented 38 percent of the total, 4.7 million. The average unemployed worker had been so for 35 weeks in January. Nearly eight million people were working part-time but wanted full-time jobs. Another 804,000 have stopped looking for work altogether, discouraged.
Unemployment among white Americans rose slightly, to seven percent. Blacks saw a slight drop in January unemployment rate to 13.8 percent. Hispanic unemployment ticked up to 9.7 percent.
The unemployment rate for all veterans in January was 7.6 percent. Veterans serving since Sept. 2001, Gulf War II, had an unemployment rate of 11.7 percent. About 252,000 veterans from this era are unemployed while another 506,000 are not in the labor force for one reason or another. Women veterans of Gulf War II were unemployed at a rate of 17.1 percent while male veterans showed a 10.5 percent unemployment rate for the month.
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