The Labor Department released its unemployment figures for the month of September yesterday. It showed that 142,000 new jobs were created, but the unemployment rate remained at 5.1% (the same rate it was in August). Unfortunately, there were fewer people employed in February (149,036,000 in August and 148,800,000 in September). That's 236,000 fewer employed workers, and the only reason the unemployment rate remained steady was because the size of the civilian work force also shrank (from 157,065,000 in August to 156,715,000 in September).
President Obama praised the September numbers, but said we could be doing much better if it wasn't for the austerity imposed by the Republican Congress. He is right. In a sluggish economy with too many people out of work, what is needed is to pump more money into the economy -- not take money out of the economy as the GOP austerity has done.
This austerity has cut funding for everything except subsidies for the rich and corporations and money for the military-industrial complex (they only things they care about, and would never cut).Until this austerity is dumped, and we return to a fairer economic policy, I'm afraid it will be very difficult to get the unemployment rate down to where it needs to be -- around 4%.
Here are the relevant numbers for September:
SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:
156,715,000
NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
7,915,000
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE
5.1%
OFFICIAL DEMOGRAPHIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATES:
Adult Men...............4.7%
Adult Women...............4.6%
Teenagers (16-19)...............16.3%
Whites...............4.4%
Blacks...............9.2%
Hispanics...............6.4%
Asians...............3.6%
Less than HS diploma...............7.9%
HS graduate...............5.2%
Some college...............4.3%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.5%
NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed, but no longer counted):
1,921,000
MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
9,836,000
MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
6.3%
NUMBER OF UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS (working part-time because they can't fin full-time work):
6,036,000
NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED/UNDEREMPLOYED WORKERS:
15,872,000
UNEMPLOYMENT/UNDEREMPLOYMENT RATE:
10.1%
