Unemployment Rate Rises Slightly In May

The Labor Department released the unemployment figures for May yesterday. According to those figures, the nation did add 69,000 jobs. But that number of new jobs is not even enough to take care of new workers entering the workforce (for that 150,000 jobs a month would be needed). So while the Labor Department said the unemployment rate was "essentially unchanged", the truth is that the rate did change -- it rose slightly to 8.2% (from April's figure of 8.1%).

The unemployment rate of 8.2% is still significantly better than it was a year ago. In May of 2011, it was around 9.1%. But it does show the economy is growing more stagnant and, if the government does nothing, job growth could easily become job loss -- throwing the nation into a deeper recession.

The Republicans will trumpet the new rate as proof that Obama's policy doesn't work and can't bring the country into a recovery. Of course, that is pure horse crap. They have blocked everything the president has tried to do to create jobs -- from rebuilding our infrastructure to cutting taxes for small businesses (real small businesses, not giant corporations).

The Republicans say the path to job creation is to take more money from the 99% and give it to the 1% -- by cutting all discretionary spending (except for the military) and giving huge new tax breaks to the rich. All we have to do is look at the example Europe is setting to know that this won't work. They tried the Republican plan (they call it "austerity"), and it has just sunk them deeper into recession. The truth is that the rich don't create jobs, no matter how much money they are given. Jobs are created by demand -- the rise in demand for goods and services. And the only way to create demand is to put more money in the pockets of the masses (the 99%).

But until the Congress breaks its deadlock and does something that puts money back back in the pockets of the mass of Americans, we are going to be stuck with the current feeble job growth (assuming there is any growth at all).

Here's the really bad news. According to the government, there are still 12.7 million people counted as unemployed. Of course, that doesn't include the 2.4 million people called "marginally attached" to the workforce because they didn't look for work in the last four weeks. And it also doesn't include the 8.1 million people who are working part-time because they can't find a full-time job. That means the full-time job shortage in the United States is really about 23.2 million. And until we put a significant amount of those people back to work, we can't say the country is recovering.

Here is the demographic breakdown of the unemployed (not counting the "marginally attached" or part-time workers looking for full-time jobs):
Adult men...............7.8%
Adult women...............7.4%
Teenagers...............24.6%
Whites...............7.4%
Blacks...............13.6%
Hispanics...............11.0%
Asians...............5.2%