The April 2010 monthly unemployment figures are out. The rate increased to 9.9% and the number of jobs gained is 290,000. How the rate can increase when the U.S. gained that many jobs will be answered below.
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000 in April, the unemployment rate edged up to 9.9 percent
Below is the nonfarm payroll, seasonally adjusted:
Bloomberg is reporting Congress may limit total unemployment insurance benefits to 99 weeks. Because of the record long term unemployed, that's going to kick off over a million people still collecting and also being counted in the unemployment rate!
In 2008, while the Recession was still a-brewing some of us tried in vanity and naivete to link the collapse of Manufacturing with the increase in unemployment and the Housing Crisis and then the Financial Crisis. Happily, we can move beyond the anecdotal to the empirical now for data on unemployment over the last decade. Many of us just sort of knew that when you put folks out of good jobs, they lose their houses, then they lose their Banksters.
There is no stopping it this time.
Last month Senator Jim Bunning created a stir with his stand against extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed through borrowing. After a lot of political grandstanding, it ended after a couple days when both sides agreed to a temporary 30-day extension.
It's interesting to read the news on today's unemployment numbers with a first line of WORST OVER?. It then goes on to explain how the numbers were "better than expected" even though the economy continues to bleed jobs.
Sure, not everything in the report was bad news...just most of it. The media was quick to report that temporary jobs were increasing, but failed to mention that the U-6 was also increasing, that the number of people on permanent layoff was increasing, and that people not in the labor force but still want a job was increasing.
The much awaited January unemployment report is released and from the headlines, one would think this is great. It's not.
The reason is the U.S. lost another 20,000 jobs. The employment-population ratio rose from 58.2 to 58.4 percent. This means while the ratio of the employed to unemployed improved, it is in part because there are more people added to the general population who are not being counted in the potential workforce or inversely, a decrease in the overall civilian workforce, which causes the ratio to increase.
Below are the total non-farm payrolls. The first is the raw numbers and the second is in percent change from the previous months report. In nonfarm payrolls one can see the real job losses that are still occurring this recession.
Nonfarm private employment decreased 84,000 from November to December 2009 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report®. The estimated change of employment from October to November was revised by 24,000, from a decline of 169,000 to a decline of 145,000.
The decline in December was the smallest since March of 2008. Employment losses are now rapidly diminishing and, if recent trends continue, private employment will begin rising within the next few months.
December’s ADP Report estimates nonfarm private employment in the service-providing sector increased by 12,000, the first increase since March of 2008. However, this employment growth
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