The Labor Department released the unemployment figures for November yesterday, and it showed that the rate dropped slightly again -- by about 0.2%. The unemployment rate was 7.7% for last month, as the economy generated about 146,000 new jobs. That's more new jobs than are needed to account for new workers entering the workforce, but not by a lot.The good news is that the unemployment rate continues to creep downward, and the current rate is the lowest rate since President Obama took office. The bad news is that at this rate it will take many years to get the unemployment rate down to an acceptable level (less than 5%). The government obviously needs to take bolder action to create new jobs.
A good start would be to pass the president's plan to rebuild our infrastructure. Other actions that could be taken are raising the minimum wage to its pre-1970 buying power, penalize companies that send American jobs to other countries and give tax breaks to companies that bring jobs back to the U.S., strengthen unions and make it easier for workers to organize, continue unemployment insurance for a longer time, and increase (or at least maintain) subsidy levels for the poor and disadvantaged. These would put more money in the hands of people who would spend it (thus creating more demand, which in turn would create more jobs).
What definitely does not need to be done is to cut social programs, Social Security, or Medicare -- and then give new tax cuts to the rich (as the Republicans want to do). This would just take money out of the economy, decreasing demand and costing even more job losses.
Here are the numbers for November:
Civilian labor force...............155.6 million
Official unemployment rate...............7.7%
Official number of unemployed workers...............12.0 million
Marginally attached (people who wanted and were available for work and had looked for work in the last 12 months, but who were not counted among the unemployed because they had not looked for work in the last 4 weeks)...............2.5 million
Total unemployed (official unemployed + marginally attached)...............14.5 million
Real unemployment rate...............9.3%
Underemployed (people who want a full-time job, but who are working part-time because they can't find full-time work)...............8.2 million
Fulltime jobs needed (underemployed + total unemployed)...............22.7 million
Rate of underemployed plus total unemployed...............14.6%
Official unemployment by group
Adult men...............7.2%
Adult women...............7.0%
Teenagers...............23.5%
Whites...............6.8%
Hispanics...............10%
Blacks...............13.2%
Asians...............6.4%
