AP photo / Paul Sancya
According to a jobs report released in Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the official unemployment rate in the U.S. in Oct. 2009 is 10.2%. A broader measure that takes into account workers that have given up job seeking or are underemployed puts it at 17.5%.
The number of unemployed persons increased to 15.7 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed has risen by 8.2 million, the Labor Department said.
The unemployment rate calculates only the amount of workers that are receiving unemployment benefits and are actively seeking work. It does not take into account those who have dropped off of unemployment benefits and those who are working part time jobs to make ends meet.
When those workers are taken into consideration, the rate is as high as 17.5% nationwide and over 20% in some states. The broader rate is highest today in states that had big housing bubbles, like California and Arizona, or that have large manufacturing sectors, like Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
The broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. While official unemployment statistics were not available during the Great Depression, Department of Labor economists working with the Times estimated that some 30 percent of the U.S. workforce was put out during that period, the report added."If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression," reporter David Leonhardt writes in Fridays edition of The New York Times.
President Barack Obama called the figures "sobering," responding to widespread media accounts that placed the figure just over 10 percent, noting the department's calculation of workers who are actively searching for jobs. "To that end, my economic team is looking at ideas such as additional investments in our aging roads and bridges, incentives to create jobs and steps to increase the flow of credit to small businesses," the president said.
At the White House Friday, President Obama signed a bill to extend unemployment benefits and a tax credit for home buyers. He said that he was also looking at ways to enact more stimulus. On Wednesday, the Fed announced that it expected to leave its benchmark interest at zero for “an extended period.”
While the measures that have been taken do help, it is becoming obvious that the key to recovering from the recession is to stem the tide of job joss and create more jobs. There is no such thing as jobless recovery, unless of course, you work on Wall Street.
Comments
If I had to measure unemployment and underemployment based on my anecdoatl evidence, I'd put it at 20 or 25 percent. Job security and dissatisfaction? That's up near 80 percent -- hardly anyone takes their job or promotion for granted anymore and almost everyone with a job (or two) I meet is now working more hours than they were five years ago, and usually covering for laid-off employees. A couple of people in food service now do the work of two waiters or waitresses -- this has become pretty common, even in upscale restaurants. We should change the name of the country to the 'United States of the Nickel and Dimed' after Barb Ehrenreich's great classic -- only it's even worse now than when her book was published in 2001.
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