New Unemployment Numbers Released

The Department of Labor has just released its unemployment figures for the month of December 2011. According to the Labor Department report, the unemployment figure has gone down by one-tenth of one percent -- from 13.3 million unemployed people (8.6%) to 13.1 million (8.5%). They say about 200,000 new jobs were created in December.

I guess that would be sort of a cause for celebration, since I believe it was the first time in 2011 that the number of new jobs equaled or exceeded the number of new workers entering the workforce (which is about 150,000). I do wonder though how many of those 200,000 new jobs were just temporary hires for the holiday season. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how many of them disappear in January.

I do however feel it necessary to remind everyone that the official government unemployment figure of 8.5% does not include all of the unemployed people in this country -- people who would love to have a decent job if they just knew where to find one, The government admits they are not counting everyone that is unemployed. They only count the people who could be verified as actively looking for work in the last four weeks. They call the rest only "marginally attached" to the workforce and don't count them.


The graphic above may seem humorous, but it is a sad reality for millions of "marginally attached" Americans (those who have reached stages 3 through 5 of the picture). The government says there are about 2.5 million of these "marginally attached" workers (who want to work, but have virtually given up trying to find work). That is probably a huge undercount though, since these people are very hard to find and count. It is an estimate, and as all governments are prone to do, the estimate is probably intentionally low to make the economic situation look better than it actually is.

And then you have the number of people that the government admits would like to work full-time, but can't find full-time work and are being forced to work a part-time job. They call these people the "underemployed", and they claim there are at least 8.1 million of them.

That means there are 23.7 million people, at a minimum, in this country who would like to have a full-time job but can't find one (13.1 million "unemployed" + 2.5 million "marginally attached" + 8.1 million "underemployed" = 23.7 million jobseekers). Is it any wonder that there are dozens of applicants for every job created? Using these government numbers, that means the number we should be worrying about (the people seeking jobs) is more like15.4%. The latest Gallup Poll survey puts this figure at 18.2%, and I suspect their figure is a lot closer to reality.

A job creation of only 200,000 a month is a paltry figure when compared to the need for jobs that currently exists. If that's the best we can do, and it was the best figure for 2011, then it's going to take many, many years to put Americans back to work -- especially considering the inaction of Congress (thanks mostly to Republican obstructionism).