New Unemployment Numbers Show No Improvement

The Labor Department released it's employment numbers for the month of September yesterday, and it shows no improvement at all The government reports that 103,000 jobs were created in September, but about 45,000 of those jobs were striking telecommunications workers returning to work. That means that once again the nation did not even create enough jobs to take care of new workers entering the workforce. The government says there were 14 million people unemployed out of a workforce of about 153,846,000. That means:

9.1% is the current government reported unemployment rate.

But that doesn't include at least 2.5 million people who have not looked for work in the last four weeks. Since they have virtually given up on finding any work, the government doesn't count them anymore. When we add these "invisible" people back in, we find there are actually 16,500,000 unemployed people out of a workforce that totals 156,246,000. Therefore:

10.6% is the real unemployment rate in the United States.

But that doesn't tell the whole story either. There are 9.3 million people who are having to work part-time because the cannot find full-time work. When we add these people in we find there are 25,800,000 people unable to find a full-time job out of the 156,246,000 workforce. Therefore:

16.5% is the percentage of the workforce that cannot find a full-time job of any kind.

And that 16.5% figure is the number we should really be worrying about, and that is most likely a lowball figure because the government is undoubtably undercounting the "invisible" people who cannot find work and have given up (at least for now).

Here are the unemployment rates for individual groups. Understand these numbers are artificially low because they don't count the "invisible" people or those working part-time who would like a full-time job.

Adult men...............8.8%
Adult women...............8.1%
Teenagers...............24.6%
Whites...............8.0%
African-Americans...............16.0%
Hispanics...............11.3%
Asians...............7.8%

The unemployment situation has shown no improvement for the last six months, and Congress seems to not care about that. Although the president has proposed a jobs program that could put 1,000,000 people back to work (which would increase demand and hopefully spur even more job creation), the plan is sure to be killed in the House of Representatives.

The Republicans (and too many blue dog Democrats) are refusing to raise taxes on the rich to pay for the program. They want to cut taxes again for the rich and pay for that by slashing the government support the unemployed and poor are depending on. Is it any wonder that the popularity of Congress is at an all-time low, and people all over the country are starting to demand change? The most important job the Congress has right now is to promote job creation, and they are failing miserably.