The Labor Department has released it's employment/unemployment statistics for the month of December. It showed that the official unemployment rate dropped by a significant 0.2% in December (from 5.8% in November to 5.6% in December) -- the lowest unemployment rate since President Bush blew up the economy.
It's not all good news though. While the number of people officially counted as unemployed dropped by 383,000, the number of employed workers grew only by 111,000. What happened to the other 272,000 unemployed people? The most likely answer is that they have given up on trying to find a job, and are no longer being counted by the government (since they haven't actively tried to find a job in the last four weeks or more).
We also don't know how many jobs will turn out to be temporary hires for the holiday, and will disappear in the next couple of months. There was not a lot of retail hiring in December, but there was in November (the month in which most of the temporary hires would have been made).
That 5.6% unemployment rate, while it is somewhat good news, is still not good enough. Before we can seriously talk about a return to a healthy economy, that figure will have to dip below 5% (and preferably below 4.5%). That may be difficult though, now that the Republicans have assumed control of both houses of Congress. There is little doubt that they will try to impose more austerity measures (so they can feed more money to the rich) -- and that will have a detrimental effect on the economy as a whole. We can only hope that President Obama has the courage and will to veto the worst of the Republican efforts.
Here are the relevant numbers for December.
Demographic breakdown of official unemployment:
Adult men...............5.3%
Adult women...............5.0%
Teenagers (16-19)...............16.8%
Whites...............4.8%
Blacks...............10.4%
Hispanics...............6.5%
Asians...............4.2%
Less than HS diploma...............8.6%
High School diploma...............5.3%
Some college/Associate's Degree...............4.9%
Bachelor's Degree or higher...............2.9%
Size of the civilian workforce:
156,129,000
Number of employed workers:
147,442,000
Official number of unemployed workers:
8,688,000
Official unemployment rate:
5.6%
Estimate of marginally-attached workers (who have not looked for work in at least four weeks and are no longer counted by government as unemployed):
2,260,000
More realistic number of unemployed workers:
10,948,000
More realistic unemployment rate:
7.0%
Number of underemployed workers (working part-time because they can't find full-time work):
6,790,000
Number of unemployed / underemployed workers:
17,738,000
Unemployment / underemployment rate:
11.36%
