The national unemployment rate again rose in June, to 9.2 percent, the Labor Department announced this morning, and job creation virtually disappeared, with just 18,000 jobs created, the lowest number in nine months, and far less than the 125,000 economists surveyed by Down Jones Newswires had expected, raising fears of a double-dip recession.
Job creation for the previous two months was also revised downward: it was halved in May, from the originally reported 54,000 to 25,000. It was reduced to 217,000 in April, from 232,000.
Private-sector employment increased by 57,000 jobs in June. But it was offset by another heavy loss in government jobs, with 39,000 such jobs lost–14,000 of them at the federal level, the rest at state and local levels, as governments and public school districts continue to cut programs and services.
Since March, the ranks of the unemployed have increased by 545,000, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.4 percentage point.
The number of unemployed Americans rose to 14.1 million (1 million of them in Florida), though the number is significantly under-counted, as it does not include the 2.7 million long-term unemployed–those who have quit looking for work. The number of people involuntarily employed part time was at 8.6 million.
Employment in manufacturing, which had been relatively strong until April, has stalled. Employment in construction continues to be flat. Leisure and tourism employment rose by 34,000, and has increased by 279,000 since January 2010, but those are lesser-paying jobs with low benefits and reduced effect on spending power to affect the economy: hotel maids can’t buy houses, cars and refrigerators, particularly when banks are no longer lending.
Health care employment ticked up 14,000 and mining by 8,000.
Here are the unemployment rates by groups:
Adult men: 9.1 percent.
Adult women: 8 percent
Teens: 24.5 percent
Asians: 6.8 percent
Blacks: 16.2 percent
Hispanics: 11.6 percent
Whites: 8.1 percent
The average workweek for all employees on private payrolls decreased by 0.1 hour to 34.3 hours in June. The manufacturing workweek decreased by 0.3 hour to 40.3 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private payrolls remained at 33.6 hours. Average hourly earnings for all employees decreased by 1 cent to $22.99. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.9 percent, not enough to keep up with inflation in food and energy costs. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees declined by 1 cent to $19.41.
“The choppy two-year-old recovery,” the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, “is proving to be one of the worst since the 1930s. It has been too slow to make up for all the jobs lost after the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. With little scope left for policy to help, President Barack Obama is likely to confront the highest unemployment rate of any postwar incumbent when he seeks re-election in the fall of 2012.”
The Truth says
Teens are included in this figure? With all due respect, a majority of teens are lazy and refuse to work “low end jobs”. They have this mentality that they need a high paying job right out of high school or while they’re in high school. I would hope that they aren’t included in this figure.
Yogi says
Perhaps this election cycle will be decided by the entrepreneurs that refuse to expand and hire new people for obvious reasons. I’m not surprised no one in the media has investigated this.
JIM R says
The Truth
Is that an opinion o r do you have facts to back up this supposed laziness of teens.
What is a ” low end job ” , is that a job people are expected to do for slave wages?
Kyle Russell says
And yet, all Obama and Congress can talk about is cutting spending…
Christie 2012 says
A trillion dollar stimulus bill that did nothing, A new health care bill that we were told would add 400,000 new jobs immediately( Thank You MS Pelosi ) Not to hard to see where the problem lays. And yet these same people what to increase taxes. I wonder how many small business added more people to their payrolls after their taxes where raised.
Kyle Russell says
The stimulus was not a trillion dollars, it was less than 800 billion. That makes a big difference. Please post the link to the claim that the health care reform would add that many jobs. What we need is short term stimulus with long term tax raises and spending cuts.
rickg says
When demand increases so will jobs. What is needed is a well funded national effort to build, repair and make more efficient our infrastructure. Yeah thats right teabaggers…. a government funded effort to get people back to work and money in their pocket which would increase demand for goods and services. The idea that the super rich will create jobs is so bogus. If that were so we wouldn’t in the economic shape that we are in now. Its been 10 years since the generous tax cuts and we have actually lost jobs not gained them. Its time to wake up and stop drinking the teabag cool aide.
The Truth says
JIM R: It’s what I’ve noticed. I’m in my late 20s and I see nothing but laziness from our next generation. They want high paying jobs right away, they don’t want to work at places like McDonalds because they feel it’s “beneath them”. Everyone has started at the bottom some where, but most teens today refuse to do this. They’re spoiled by technology and all else that is provided to them.
Outsider says
The real culprit is uncertainty and a loss in confidence in our never-ran-so-much-as-a lemondade-stand chief executive. He broke promise after promise on the economy, and now people recognize him for the the incompetent boob he is. Unemployment wouldn’t rise above 8% if we passed the stimulus; it’s back above 9% and rising. Vice-Dunce Biden bragged that the recovery was in “high gear” last summer; seems like the car is back in reverse. Healthcare costs were supposed to drop as a result of the Obamacare bill; instead, premiums are rising twice as fast as they were before. This takes money right out of employers’ pockets leaving less money to hire new people. And rickg, I thought we WERE going to rebuild our infrastructure with the first so-called stimulus; instead of roads and bridges, we got $200,000 studies on how gay men interact in bars in Argentina and a multi-million dollar restoration of some rat habitat in Nancy Pelosi’s district. The moron-in-chief himself admitted that we didn’t have as many “shovel-ready” projects as he thought. Hmmmm, just like he admitted that whole middle east peace thing was a lot harder than he thought it was going to be. He again attacks private jet owners; the general aviation industry provides 1.2 million jobs in our country with an economic footprint of $150 billion, and he attacks it while he and his family fly around the world on airliners built for one. What we really need is a leader with real-world experience at managing and creating jobs, not some over-hyped so-called intellectual with zero experience and a penchant for voting “present” from far off lands, where he arrives in public financed luxury fit for a king and queen.
Christie 2012 says
The CBO ( Congressional Budget Office) said the interest on the stimulus bill will be approximately $347 billion over the next 10 years. Yes, even the government must pay interest on the money they don’t have. Here is a clip of Princess Nancy and and all her democratic friends blowing smoke up the American peoples ass about the heath care bill and jobs. Even Prezbo is sitting in on this BS a thon.
Kyle Russell says
You’re not factoring in the growth caused by stimulus in the cost equation. Let’s say the 750 of the 787 billion was spent in the first 3 years, with an average of about $250 billion spent each year (not right, but pretty close based on: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/07/09/opinion/070911krugman2/070911krugman2-blog480.jpg). With a multiplier of say, 1.8 (http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/papers/2010/wp10-17bk.pdf) that gave a boost to output of about 3.2 % of GDP. Now, with tax revenues at about 26.9% of GDP (according to the conservative Heritage Foundation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP), that gives a boost to tax revenue of around $120 billion per year. So, in the first 3 years, the total boost to revenue was about $360 billion.
Dorothea says
Christie, the stimulus bill kept us from going into a deep Bush promoted depression and hasn’t cost us a trillion dollars. You have projected possible future costs with current costs. As for the 400,00 jobs “almost immediately”, if you actually listen to the video, Congresswoman Pelosi is talking about entrepeneurs who will be able to invest in employment rather than healthcare costs. Since the healthcare bill doesn’t take effect until 2014, “almost immediately” would not apply to today’s job market but to the job market in 2014 when the healthcare bill takes efffect.
The only smoke going up anyone’s ass is the smoke of the radical right congressional members who believe, after decades of this failed policy, that budget cuts with no additional revenues will solve all our financial woes. The so-called job providers do nothing but line their already astoudingly rich pockets with more riches, while the middle class shrinks into poverty.
I don’t know why you are so enamored of that blow hard bully Christie who turned down an infrastructure project, as did our own governor, that would have provided thousands of jobs. Instead, both governors eliminated jobs and in doing so, created more financial havoc in their respective states. Perhaps if they had eliminated the jobs and kept the money to eliminate debt, I might have some respect for them. But they didn’t. The governors turned around and gave additonal tax breaks to the aforementioned rich campaign contributors.