Unemployment Rate Inches Down to 5% for October

The Labor Department has released it's labor statistics for the month of October. The good news is that about 271,000 jobs were created. The bad news is that most of those jobs were eaten up by a 216,000 increase in the size of the labor force. The number of unemployed people only decreased by about 7,000 people. But those numbers were good enough to decrease the official unemployment rate by 0.1% -- to 5%.

That is the lowest rate since the Bush Recession kicked in, but it's still not good enough. Full employment is usually considered to be about 3.5%. Why has it taken so long to reduce unemployment? In the past, we have recovered from high employment after a recession mush faster.

The answer is that the government, thanks to Republicans, has done the wrong thing. Most economists agree that the answer to recovering from a recession (and increasing job creation) is to pump more money into the economy. But the government has done just the opposite. The Republican-imposed austerity has taken money out of the nation's economy -- and this has stunted both the recovery and job creation.

Here are the relevant statistics for October:

SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORKFORCE:

157,028,000

OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

7,908,000

OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

5.0%

DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:

Adult men...............4.7%
Adult women...............4.5%
Teenagers (16-19)...............15.9%
Whites...............4.4%
Blacks...............9.2%
Hispanics...............6.3%
Asians...............3.5%
Less than HS diploma...............7.4%
HS graduate...............5.2%
Some college...............4.4%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.5%

NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed, but no longer counted in the official government figures):

1,916,000

MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:

9,824,000

MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:

6.26%

NUMBER OF UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS (working part-time but seeking full-time work):

5,767,000

TOTAL OF UNEMPLOYED/UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS:

15,591,000

UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLOYMENT RATE:

9.93%