The Labor Department released its unemployment statistics for October on Friday. It showed that the economy produced 531,000 jobs in that month -- a very respectable number. That lowered the unemployment rate by 0.2 points to 4.6% (from 4.8% in September). That's the lowest percentage since before the pandemic took hold in the country.
Those numbers might have you thinking that the economy was almost back to normal. But the truth is that there are still millions of workers without employment. Note in the chart below, we are still over 4 million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic. These people are no longer counted since they have not been able to seek employment. Many of these are women and single parents, who cannot return to work because of a lack of child care. Others are workers who simply cannot accept a low-wage job that won't pay the bills.
The Build Back Better Bill would help to cure this by helping people find and afford child care. Raising the minimum wage would also help.
Here are the relevant statistics for the month of October:
SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN LABOR FORCE:
161,458,000
OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
7,419,000
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
4.6%
DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:
Adult men...............4.3%
Adult women...............4.4%
Teens (16-19)...............11.9%
Whites...............4.0%
Blacks...............7.9%
Asians...............4.2%
Hispanics...............5.9%
Less than HS diploma...............7.4%
HS graduate...............5.4%
Some college...............4.4%
Bachelor's deg. or more...............2.4%
NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed but no longer counted):
1,681,000
MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS (official + marginally-attached):
9,100,000
MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
5.64%
