U.S. unemployment rate DOWN to 9.7% in January
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary released today, the unemployment rate in the United States fell from 10.0% in December 2009 to 9.7% in January 2010, and nonfarm employment was essentially unchanged, with a loss of 20,000 jobs. Employment fell in construction and in transportation and warehousing, and temporary help services and retail trade added jobs.
CNN notes that, since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, 8.4 million jobs have evaporated from the U.S. economy, 1.4 million more jobs than previously believed! The revision came about because the U.S. government had been drastically underestimating the number of businesses that were closing as the result of the recession.
In January, the number of unemployed persons declined to 14.8 million, who have been jobless for an average of 30 weeks.
The long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks or longer) continued to trend upward in January, to 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has increased by 5 million.
The number of people who worked part time for economic reasons (sometimes called “involuntary part-time workers” decreased from 9.2 million to 8.3 million. These people worked part-time because their hours had been cut or because they had been unable to find a full-time job.
Around 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the workforce in January, an increase of 409,000 from a year earlier (not seasonally adjusted). They were not counted in the unemployed because they had not looked for work in the four weeks that preceded the survey. Among the marginally attached were 1.1 million discouraged workers, up from 734,000 a year earlier. Discouraged workers do not believe that jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.5 million persons who were marginally attached to the workforce had not looked for work in the four weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
Various job categories showed the following changes in January:
-Bill at
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