Unemployment Rate Drops In February

The Labor Department released the unemployment figures for February yesterday, and it showed that the government's official unemployment rate had dropped by two-tenths of a point. The primary reasons for the drop were a significant new number of jobs being created, and a drop in the size of the civilian workforce. There were 236,000 new jobs created in February, and the civilian workforce shrunk by 130,000 people (probably mostly people who have given up trying to find a job). This resulted in a drop of the official unemployment rate from 7.9% in January to 7.7% in February.

The new jobs creation number is a fairly respectable one, and is close to the number needed to pull the unemployment rate back down to a reasonable number (below 5%). But for that to happen, the number of jobs created would have to be that good for at least two or three years -- and that is very unlikely. I say that because of the "sequestration" cuts Congress allowed to happen recently due to their inability to compromise (especially the House Republicans). Those drastic cuts will take more than 80 billion out of the economy in the next few months -- reducing demand, and with it, job creation.

This is the current demographic breakdown of the official unemployment percentages.
Adult men...............7.1%
Adult women...............7.0%
Teenagers...............25.1%
Whites...............6.8%
African-Americans...............13.8%
Hispanics...............9.6%
Asians...............6.1%

Here are the other important February numbers:

SIZE OF CIVILIAN WORKFORCE:

155,524,000

NUMBER OF WORKERS OFFICIALLY UNEMPLOYED:

12,032,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

7.7%

NUMBER OF WORKERS "MARGINALLY ATTACHED" TO WORKFORCE BECAUSE THEY DID NOT LOOK FOR WORK IN THE LAST FOUR WEEKS (NOT COUNTED IN OFFICIAL RATE):

2,588,000

REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE (MARGINALLY ATTACHED PLUS OFFICIAL):

9.4%

NUMBER OF WORKERS WORKING PART-TIME BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT FIND FULL-TIME WORK:

7,988,000

REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE WITH PART-TIME WORKERS ADDED:

14.5%