Unemployment Falls To A 7-Year Low In April At 5.4%

The Labor Department released it's official unemployment statistics for April on Friday, and once again the news was good. The rate has fallen by another 0.1% -- from 5.5% in March to 5.4% in April. About 233,000 new jobs were created.

The bad news is that the number of unemployed Americans only fell by 26,000. Most of those new jobs went to new workers entering the workforce, as the civilian workforce increased from 156,906,000 in March to 157,072,000 in April. Also raining on the new unemployment rate's parade is the fact that too many of the new jobs are low wage jobs -- jobs that will keep workers struggling to get out of poverty even though they're now working.

The blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of congressional Republicans. While President Obama and Democrats have shown their willingness to raise the minimum wage to a livable wage, the Republicans have blocked all efforts to do that. And thanks to that, by 2020 about a quarter of the workers in this country will be low wage workers. Just think of the boost to this economy (and to job creation) that a livable wage for all workers could create.

Here are the relevant numbers for April:

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:

Adult men...............5.0%
Adult women...............4.9%
Teenagers (16-19)...............17.1%
Whites...............4.7%
Blacks...............9.6%
Hispanics...............6.9%
Asians...............4.4%
Less than HS diploma...............8.6%
HS graduate...............5.4%
Some college...............4.7%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.7%

SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORKFORCE:

157,072,000

OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

8,549,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

5.4%

MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (not counted as unemployed in official count):

2,115,000

MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

10,664,000

MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

6.8%

NUMBER OF UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS (who can't find full-time jobs):

6,580,000

NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED/UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS:

17,244,000

UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLOYMENT RATE:

10.98%