The Labor Department released its unemployment statistics for the month of December on Friday. It showed that the economy created about 199,000 new jobs in December. That was good enough to lower the unemployment rate by 0.3% to 3.9%. The number of officially unemployed workers dropped by about 483,000.
These are good numbers, but we must remember that many workers still cannot return to work because of a lack of affordable child care. They are no longer counted since they have not been able to look for work in more than four weeks. Passing the Build Back Better Act would take care of that, and return us to a full employment economy -- something that has not happened in many years.
Here are the relevant statistics for December:
SIZE OF THE CIVILIAN WORK FORCE:
162,294,000
OFFICIAL NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS:
6,319,000
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
3.9%
DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN OF OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT:
Adult men...............3.6%
Adult women...............3.6%
Teens (16-19)...............10.9%
Whites...............3.2%
Blacks...............7.1%
Asians...............3.8%
Hispanics...............4.9%
Less than HS diploma...............5.2%
HS graduate...............4.6%
Some college...............3.6%
Bachelor's deg or more...............2.1%
NUMBER OF MARGINALLY-ATTACHED WORKERS (unemployed but not counted):
1,639,000
MORE REALISTIC NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED (official + marginally-attached):
7,958,000
MORE REALISTIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE:
4.9%