We wrote about the December Employment Report here. There was not much to like in that report.On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the January 2010 employment report. The unemployment rate fell from 10.0 to 9.7 percent in January, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-20,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction and in transportation and warehousing, while temporary help services and retail trade added jobs. A total of 60,000 goods producing jobs were lost (higher paying jobs). Professional services contributed 44,000 jobs to the plus side, but 42,000 of them were part-time jobs!
The official unemployment rate is 9.7%. However, if you start counting all the people that want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is listed in the above chart under the U-6 column, which is 16.5%.
The trend is heading in the right direction, but jobs are still being lost, although at a much slower rate and close to break even. We need to create 200k jobs monthly just to have a sustainable recovery. The unemployment rate went down from 10.0% to 9.7%, but that percentage can be misleading due to the fact that discouraged people have left the pool of the unemployed while jobs are still being lost. Thank you for reading.
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