The Labor Department has released their unemployment figures for July of 2014, and it showed the economy had produced about 209,000 jobs last month. Unfortunately, this did not even cover the growth in the size of the civilian workforce -- which rose by about 329,000 workers (from 155,694,000 in June to 156,023,000 in July). This caused the July unemployment rate to rise by 0.1% to 6.2% (from 6.1% in June), as the number of officially unemployed Americans rose from 9,474,000 in June to 9,671,000 in July.
This is not good news, but it should not be surprising. The economy continues to stumble along, and employers simply do not need a lot of new workers to meet the current economic demand. Until demand for goods/services is significantly increased, we can expect the unemployment rate to remain about the same. This is a shame, since Main Street will not really start experiencing a recovery from the recent recession until we get unemployment down below 5%.
How can we stimulate the economy to increase demand? It won't happen by cutting taxes further for the rich and the corporations. They are already making record incomes and profits, and are sitting on larger cash reserves than ever before -- but it is not creating enough new jobs. It also won't be done by cutting more government programs. We need to put more money into the economy -- not take more money out of it.
There are two things that could be done quickly (if the GOP would cooperate) -- pass a massive bill to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and raise the minimum wage to at least $10.10 an hour. Either would stimulate the economy and increase demand, and both together would cause a huge increase in demand (which would create a massive number of jobs, and reduce the number of people needing government help through social programs). Unfortunately, we will probably have to vote the Republicans out of power before either can be done.
Here are the relevant numbers for July:
Demographic breakdown of official unemployment:
Adult men...............5.7%
Adult women...............5.7%
Teenagers (16 to 19)...............20.2%
Whites...............5.3%
Blacks...............11.4%
Hispanics...............7.8%
Asians...............4.5%
Less than HS diploma...............9.6%
HS graduates...............6.1%
Some college (& Associate's degree)...............5.3%
Bachelor's degree (& higher)...............3.1%
Number of people in the civilian workforce:
156,023,000
Number of people counted officially as unemployed:
9,671,000
Official unemployment rate:
6.2%
Number of unemployed marginally-attached to workforce (not counted as unemployed since they didn't look for work in the last four weeks):
2,178,000
More realistic number of unemployed persons (official + marginally-attached):
11,849,000
More realistic unemployment rate:
7.6%
Number of underemployed people (working part-time because they can't find a full-time job):
7,511,000
Number of people needing full-time work (unemployed + underemployed):
19,360,000
Unemployment/Underemployment rate:
12.4%
