Unemployment Rises Slightly In December

If there was much hiring for the holiday season, it didn't show up in the employment statistics for the month of December. The Labor Department has released the December unemployment numbers, and it shows that although 155,000 new jobs were created, that was not enough to lower the unemployment rate. In fact, the official unemployment rate ticked up slightly to about 7.8% (about 0.1% higher than the reported rate of 7.7% for November). However, that was about 0.7% lower than the December 2011 rate of 8.5%.

I don't know if it was due to slow holiday sales (which rose less than 1% after being expected to equal last year's rise of 3-4%) or because the employers were worried about the impending "fiscal cliff", but it looks like the new jobs didn't quite cover the number of new workers entering the workforce. The unemployment rate has been stuck in the 7.7% to 7.9% range for four months now -- about 3% higher than what could be considered an acceptable number. The average number of jobs created each month in 2012 was 155,000, well short of the number needed to put a significant dent in unemployment.

The number of people who are considered marginally-attached to the workforce rose slightly -- going from 2.5 million in November to 2.6 million in December. These are people who were unemployed and had looked for work within the past 12 months, but who had not looked for work in the last four weeks. This group (probably undercounted), although not employed, are not included in the official unemployment rate.

The number of the underemployed dropped from 8.2 million in November to about 7.9 million in December. These are people who would like to have a full-time job, but are forced to accept part-time work because they can't find a full-time job. They are also not included in the official unemployment rate.

Here are the numbers for December 2012:

Civilian workforce...............155.5 million

Official number of unemployed workers...............12.2 million

Official unemployment rate...............7.8%

Number of workers "marginally-attached"...............2.6 million

Real number of workers unemployed (probably an undercount)...............14.8 million
(official unemployed + marginally-attached)

Real unemployment rate...............9.5%

Number of underemployed workers...............7.9 million

Number of unemployed/underemployed workers...............22.7 million

Unemployed/underemployed rate...............14.6%

Demographic breakdown of official unemployed
Adult women...............7.3%
Adult men...............7.2%
Teenagers...............23.5%
Blacks...............14.0%
Hispanics...............9.6%
Whites...............6.9%
Asians...............6.6%