Unemployment Rate Continues To Drop

Unemployment was one of the things the Republicans were hoping would help them to retake the White House, but that doesn't seem to be working out so well for them. They have blocked all the efforts to boost job creation that the president has come up with, including a bill to help veterans find jobs. They thought if they could keep the unemployment rate high it would look bad for the president, and somehow justify their own policies (even though those policies caused a serious recession and destroyed millions of American jobs).

But when the Labor Department released its unemployment report for September, it showed that the unemployment rate had dropped again -- this time by 0.3%. That means the unemployment rate has dropped by 1.3% since September of 2011 -- destroying the GOP narrative that President Obama's policies can't spur job creation, especially since this is probably the last unemployment report that will be released until after the election next month.

According to the Labor Department Report, non-farm jobs increased by 114,000 in the month of September. I am tempted to say this was due to people giving up and dropping out of the pool that is counted by the government, since that is just about the number of jobs needed to keep up with new workers entering the job market. But I said the same thing after the reports for July and August were released, and those figures have now been revised (from 141,000 to 181,000 for July, and from 96,000 to 142,000 for August). That means at least part of the drop in the unemployment rate was due to new job creation.

This does not mean the unemployment situation is good -- only that it is slightly improved. The current rate of 7.8% is still far too high, and many more jobs must be created, including a better monthly job creation figure (it should be over 200,000 a month to show real economic improvement). But even if the unemployment rate is falling too slowly, at least it is moving in the right direction. Hopefully, the voters will realize that jobs are created by an increase in demand (and not by giving more money to the rich and raising taxes for the middle class, as the Republicans want to do), and they will return President Obama to the White House and give him a Democratic majority in Congress.

Here is the current unemployment situation:

Unemployment Rate...............7.8%

Number of unemployed (as determined by the government)...............12.1 million

Number of marginally-attached (unemployed, but haven't looked for work in the last four weeks and are no longer counted by the government)...............2.5 million

Real number of unemployed people (unemployed + marginally-attached)...............14.6 million

Number of underemployed (those working part-time because they can't find full-time work)...............8.6 million

Number of full-time jobs needed (unemployed + marginally-attached + underemployed)...............23.2 million

Unemployment Rate (by demographic group)
Adult men...............7.3%
Adult women...............7.0%
Teenagers...............23.7%
Whites...............7.0%
Blacks...............13.4%
Hispanics...............9.9%
Asians...............4.8%