An Unemployed Nation!
The number of unemployed Americans increased by 603,000 in October to 10.1 million —The largest number since 1983.
More than 22 percent of all unemployed people have been out of work for six months
or longer — another level not reached in a quarter-century.
With plunging housing prices, tight credit and shrinking paychecks we are in a downward spiral. Companies have been hiring tepidly and laying off workers throughout the year, the so-called underemployment rate — which includes people working part-time for lack of full-time positions and those who have given up looking for work — rose to 11.8 percent, up from 8.4 percent a year earlier.Labor Department News Release on Employment“What you see now is this cascading of unemployment moving from hours cut to hiring freezes to layoffs,” said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “At this point, we have a very toxic combination of all of the above. There’s almost no economic activity out there that’s going to generate jobs right now.
This is the front edge of the deeper trough of the recession. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” Wages have effectively shrunk for most workers, as rising costs for food and fuel have more than absorbed meager increases in pay. In October, weekly wages for rank-and-file workers — those not in supervisory or managerial positions — grew 2.9 percent from October 2007, almost certainly below the rate of inflation.
The health care industry and public schools were the only fields that showed more than modest growth last month. Some 90,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared. So did 49,000 construction jobs. Retail lost 38,000 jobs in October. The financial industry shed 24,000. The annual pace of auto sales fell off in October, down 15 percent compared to September, according to analysis from Goldman Sachs.
Consumer spending dropped between July and September — the first quarterly decline in 17 years. On Thursday, major retailers reported a sharp pullback in sales in October, presaging what is likely to be the weakest holiday spending in many years.
The widely watched Institute for Supply Management survey fell in October to depths last seen 26 years ago, reflecting shrinking industrial activity and suggesting weakening demand for goods as the economy slows. Banks continued to tighten their wallets in October.
OCTOBER 2008 UNEMPLOYMENT DATA
*(U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS)
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT: 6.5%
A year earlier, the number of unemployed persons was 7.3 million,
and the jobless rate was 4.8 percent.
[BLS] White 5.9%
African American 11.1%
Hispanic 8.8%
Asian** 3.8%
Men 20 years
and over 6.3% Women 20 years
and over 5.3%
Teen-agers (16-19 years) 20.6%
Black teens 32.4%
Officially unemployed 10.1 million
HIDDEN UNEMPLOYMENT- Working part-time because can't find a full-time
job : -6.7 million
Source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
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