The Labor Department released its unemployment report for September on Friday. It showed a fairly healthy 254,000 jobs were created in the month. That was good enough to reduce the unemployment rate to 4.1% (from 4.2% in August). It's the second straight month the rate dropped by 0.1%.
Here are the relevant statistics for September:
SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:
168,699,000
OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
6,834,000
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
4.1%
DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:
Adult men...............3.7%
Adult women...............3.6%
Teens (16-19)...............14.3%
Whites...............3.6%
Blacks...............5.7%
Asians...............4.1%
Hispanics...............5.1%
No HS diploma...............6.8%
HS graduate...............4.0%
Some college...............3.4%
Bachelor's deg. or more...............2.3%
NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed but not counted):
1,605,000
MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED (official + marginally-attached):
8,439,000
MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
5.0%