Unemployment Rate Drops Again

The United States Labor Department has released its unemployment figures for the month of March -- and once again, the rate has fallen. The rate for February was 8.3%. The rate for March dropped another 0.1% to 8.2%.

The economy created about 120,000 jobs in March. To tell the truth, that is only about enough jobs to take care of the number of new workers entering the job market. The rate probably fell because another 0.1% of jobseekers gave up trying to find a job, and are no longer being counted as unemployed by the federal government.

The rate is still much too high, and not nearly enough jobs are being created to get the economy moving again. But the headlines still read that the rate has once again fallen, and that is what most Americans will see. And with an election coming up, that is very good for President Obama and very bad for the Republicans.

Here are all of the latest numbers:

Jobs created in March: 120,000

Unemployment rate: 8.2%

Official number of unemployed: 12.7 million

Number of underemployed (working part-time because they can't find full-time work): 7.7 million

Number of "marginally-attached" workers (who are no longer counted because they didn't look for work in the last four weeks): 2.4 million

Long-term unemployed (out of work for more than 27 weeks): 5.3 million (42.5% of the unemployed) -- does not include the 2.4 million marginally-attached

Unemployment rate by demographic breakdown:
Adult men..........7.6%
Adult women..........7.4%
Teenagers..........25.0%
Whites..........7.3%
Blacks..........14.0%
Hispanics..........10.3%
Asians..........6.2%

Real unemployment/underemployment number (unemployed + underemployed + marginally-attached): 14.5%