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In July, the number of unemployed persons was 14.5 million. The unemployment rate was 9.4 percent, little changed for the second consecutive month...The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 584,000 over the month to 5.0 million...2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in July, 709,000 more than a year earlier...Among the marginally attached, there were 796,000 discouraged workers in July, up by 335,000 over the past 12 months.

WASHINGTON -- The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for state jobless benefits fell last week, providing another glimmer of hope that the economy may be on the road to recovery. Initial claims for jobless benefits fell by 38,000 to 550,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis in the week ended Aug. 1, the Labor Department said in its weekly report Thursday. The four-week average of new claims, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, fell by 4,750 to 555,250, the lowest level since Jan. 24. The tally of continuing claims -- those drawn by workers for more than...

CNBC has some mixed news on the economy this morning, indicating that the American economy has not yet turned a corner. On the plus side, manufacturing rose in June, but slower than it did in May. On the negative side, the services sector — 80% of the American economy — contracted in July rather than expanded as expected: The U.S. service sector contracted in July at a faster pace than in June, according to a report released Wednesday. The Institute for Supply Management’s services index fell to 46.4 last month from 47.0 in June, below economists’ median forecast for a...

RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — Chuck Dettman said he had not really considered the notion back in 2001 that he and his friends in a job-search support group would never recover from being laid off. The country was in a recession then, as now, and the professionals who had just lost their jobs met weekly at a local job center to network and trade advice. Despite the national economic problems, they remained confident that they would not only find work but would also be compensated as they had been in the past. Eight years later, however, most of the people who...

President Barack Obama’s top economic officials said in interviews aired Sunday that the administration may support an extension in unemployment benefits. Some on Capitol Hill view that as a second stimulus package, although it is unlikely to be billed that way, because of rising concern about government spending. “We’ll do what’s necessary to make appropriate unemployment benefits available,” national economic adviser Lawrence Summers said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” On ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in response to a question by host George Stephanopoulos about extending benefits: “I think that is something that the administration and Congress...

The 10 metropolitan areas where the unemployment rate has risen the most in the past year, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are all major manufacturing centers, many with ties to the automobile industry. CLICK ON ABOVE LINK FOR THE SLIDE SHOW

WASHINGTON -- The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for state jobless benefits rose last week, but they remain below peak levels reached in the spring. Initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 25,000 to 584,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis in the week ended July 25, the Labor Department said in its weekly report Thursday. The four-week average of new claims, which aims to smooth volatility in the data, fell by 8,250 to 559,000, the lowest level since January 24. The tally of continuing claims -- those drawn by workers for more than one week -- fell by...

How much are politicians straining to convince people that the government is stimulating the economy? In Oregon, where lawmakers are spending $176 million to supplement the federal stimulus, Democrats are taking credit for a remarkable feat: creating 3,236 new jobs in the program's first three months. But those jobs lasted on average only 35 hours, or about one work week. After that, those workers were effectively back unemployed, according to an Associated Press analysis of state spending and hiring data. By the state's accounting, a job is a job, whether it lasts three hours, three days, three months, or a...

The U.S. economy is not only shedding jobs at a record rate; it is shedding more jobs than it is supposed to. It’s bad enough that the unemployment rate has doubled in only a year and a half and one out of six construction workers is out of work. What truly troubles President Obama’s economic advisers is that, even adjusting for the recession, the contraction in employment seems way too high. As one administration official said, “This has been a very steep job loss.” One proof, he added, is that the country is deviating from the standard (among economists) jobs...

WASHINGTON — Years of state and federal neglect have hobbled the nation’s unemployment system just as a brutal recession has doubled the number of jobless Americans seeking aid. In a program that values timeliness above all else, decisions involving more than a million applicants have been slowed, and hundreds of thousands of needy people have waited months for checks. And with benefit funds at dangerous lows even before the recession began, states are taking on billions in debt, increasing the pressure to raise taxes or cut aid, just as either would inflict maximum pain. Sixteen states, with exhausted funds, are...

As of this writing, it looks as though the average unemployment rate in 2009 is going to average at least 1.5 percentage points above where last December the incoming Obama administration thought that it was likely to be. Instead of the 7.8% forecast last December, year-2009 unemployment looks to average 9.3% or higher. Year-2009 real GDP also looks to be lower than the income Obama administration was forecasting last December: $11.40 rather than $11.53 trillion. The macroeconomic news has been bad. The financial crisis that gathered force from the summer of 2007 through the summer of 2008 and then exploded...

Fifteen states have crossed a painful threshold: 10 percent unemployment. More states, and the nation, likely will follow, one of the biggest dangers to an economic recovery. How consumers behave in the face of rising unemployment will figure prominently in shaping a broader rebound. If they go back into hibernation and sharply cut spending like they did at the end of last year, the recovery could cave in. More likely is that consumers will stay cautious, making for a fragile and slow-moving national economic turnaround, economists said. The Labor Department on Friday said unemployment topped 10 percent in 15 states...

BuzzCharts spent much of 2003, 2004, and 2005 rebutting the media mantra that the U.S. was experiencing a “jobless recovery.” While unemployment rates bobbed between the upper end of 4 percent and the lower end of 6 percent, the press sang dirges about the “worst job market since Herbert Hoover.” So why is it that nobody seems to mention a “jobless recovery” anymore, especially with the unemployment rate marching toward 10 percent? The data now confirm that we really are in a jobless recovery. Unemployment just hit 9.5 percent, with few signs of a momentum reversal. And we just...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- First-time claims for state unemployment benefits fell in the latest weekly data, after seasonal adjustment, while continuing claims hit a record high, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The number of initial claims in the week ending July 4 fell 52,000 to 565,000 - the lowest level since January - as the manufacturing layoffs, predominantly automotive, that had been expected have already occurred at some companies, according to the Labor Department, which added that some seasonally expected layoffs may come later or not at all. The four-week average of initial claims fell 10,000 to 606,000. For the week...

... Tens of thousands of laid-off workers [...] have turned to retraining as a lifeline. Yet for all the popularity of these government-financed programs, there are questions about whether they actually work, even as President Obama’s stimulus plan directs $1.4 billion more to retraining and other services for people who have lost their jobs. In Michigan, where the unemployment rate in May was 14.1 percent, the nation’s highest, 78,000 people are enrolled in the state’s No Worker Left Behind program and 7,800 are on the waiting list. At the Michigan Works job center here, where Mr. Hutchins applied for retraining...

I'm not saying the President doesn't deserve some recreation, but the standard I hold him to is, "What if Bush had done this?" Similar to President Obama, President Bush took office with a recession leftover from his predecessor (though not as deep a recession). Six months into that recession, President Bush's tax cuts had almost ended it. Six months into President Obama's recession, his economic policies have statistically made things worse, and his efforts show absolutely ZERO hint of making things better (per uber-capitalists like Warren Buffet). In light of all that, I think President Obama's Luau was not...

"It is unlikely that new hiring has picked up in any meaningful fashion," Joshua Shapiro, chief economist with MFR Inc., a consulting firm, wrote in a note to clients.

<p>WASHINGTON -- The number of newly laid-off Americans filing for jobless benefits fell for the third time in the past four weeks, fresh evidence that companies are cutting fewer jobs.</p> <p>The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment benefits fell last week by 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 601,000. That's below analysts' estimates of 615,000.</p>

A few months ago, Andrea Kornfeld was working on a computer program to shave milliseconds off of transactions at Merrill Lynch. Now, she's spending her severance pay on a mosquito net for her new job: as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching computer skills to high-school students in Cameroon. Ms. Kornfeld, 26, applied to the program in August, before the worst part of the financial crisis. Her acceptance arrived a few weeks after she was laid off in January. "Honestly, getting laid off was a good thing," she says. "Merrill Lynch just wasn't a good fit for me and it gave...

David Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff flagged a different way of looking at US unemployment figures on Monday; rather than noting the slowing rise in unemployment, he pointed in the direction of the number of people employed part-time and average hours worked. In which case the two following trends can be observed: The part-timezation effect of slowing wage growth and declining hours has had one major impact on corporate America, says Rosenberg: a decreasing wage bill. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of personal income and aggregate demand, which are needed to grow top-line revenues. What it equals — in no...

For newer readers, I do an in-depth post on the "real unemployment rate" a few times a year - the last version was in [Apr 3, 2009: Real March Unemployment Rate Reaches 12.5%], so you can see definitions and methodology for 'reality' there. Most other months, I just do a Cliff Notes version similar to what I did last month [May 8, 2009: Real April Unemployment Rate Reaches 12.9%]. Let me reiterate as I always do in these posts; this number really only matters to economists or those seeking truth. To market participants, it's more or less a game of...

The unemployment numbers for May hit earlier this morning, and it looks like Barack Obama didn’t save many jobs at all. Despite claims from both Obama and VP Joe Biden that the Porkulus package had saved 150,000 jobs, unemployment went up another half-percent to 9.4%, setting a new record for the past quarter century. Unemployment rose across a broad spectrum of demographics, too: Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The unemployment rate continued to...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With companies in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate jumped to 9.4 percent in May, the highest in more than 25 years. But the pace of layoffs eased, with employers cutting 345,000 jobs, the fewest since September. The much smaller-than-expected reduction in payroll jobs, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, adds to evidence that the recession is loosening its hold on the country. It marked the fourth straight month that the pace of layoffs slowed.

WASHINGTON - The number of people on the unemployment insurance rolls fell slightly for the first time in 20 weeks, while the tally of new jobless claims also dipped, the government said Thursday. The Labor Department report provides a glimmer of good news for job seekers, though both drops were small and the figures remain significantly above the levels associated with a healthy economy. The department also said U.S. workers were more productive in the first quarter than previously estimated, as rapid layoffs forced companies to make do with fewer employees. The tally of first-time claims for jobless benefits declined...

DALLAS, May 19 (Reuters) - Rodney Ringler is an unemployed blue collar male without a college degree. He's hardly alone. Men like him have been the main victims of the current recession in the United States. "I haven't worked since December of 2007, around the time this recession started," Ringler, a 49-year-old computer technician, said as he walked his dog in a Dallas suburb. He sees little light at the end of the tunnel. "I've been looking to get into law enforcement because it's a growth area," he said, but had no immediate prospects. One statistic that stands out in...

Government data are expected to show that initial claims for jobless benefits increased last week, primarily due to increased layoffs in the auto industry. The Labor Department's tally of new jobless claims likely rose to a seasonally adjusted 610,000 from the previous week's 601,000, according to a survey of Wall Street economists by Thomson Reuters.

Really? Only 8.9? A quick look at the United States Department of Labor shows that it is really 15.8%…here is their table....

The pace of layoffs slowed in April when employers cut 539,000 jobs, the fewest in six months. But the unemployment rate climbed to 8.9 percent, the highest since late 1983, as many businesses remain wary of hiring given all the economic uncertainties. “This is a truly awful report that will likely be taken as a good report because the job losses have slowed,” Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors, wrote in a note to clients. The Labor Department tally released Friday wasn't nearly as deep as the 620,000 job cuts that economists were expecting, and was helped by a burst...

Unemployment rate hits 8.9%

Use prohibited so go to link but the same thing was in WSJ this morning and other sources so the title is not copyright violation.

An unemployed Connecticut woman has taken her job search to the side of a highway.Pasha Stocking, of East Hampton, has rented a billboard along Interstate 95 in Bridgeport. The sign includes her photo and the message, "Hire Me!" It directs people to her Web site, www.hirepasha.com.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since late 1983, as a wide range of employers eliminated a net total of 663,000 jobs. The Labor Department's report is fresh evidence of the toll the recession has inflicted on America's workers and companies. Most economists expect the job cuts will continue for much of this year. The latest tally of job losses, released Friday, was slightly higher than the 654,000 that economists expected. The rise in the unemployment rate matched expectations. Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a...

SACRAMENTO — California's jobless rate climbed to 10.5 percent in February, the second month of double-digit unemployment. ... Sharp declines in construction, manufacturing, finance, trade, transportation, professional services, leisure, health and education are blamed for the losses. ... The state has lost more than 600,000 jobs since February 2008, a 4 percent drop.

It is a bit like speed-dating for America's jobhunters. Attendees at a "pink slip party" in Los Angeles, California Few party-goers will leave with even an interview At a trendy bar in Los Angeles, they queue to get in - smartly-dressed professionals, all looking for the right connection. "The best thing I could come out with is a job offer," a young woman says hopefully. An older man laments: "Opportunity has always come knocking on my door. For the first time in my life, no-one's knocking." "You have to try and stay upbeat," says another man, unemployed since his own...

First, Arthur Santa-Maria called Bank of America to ask how to check the balance of his new unemployment benefits debit card. The bank charged him 50 cents. He chose not to complain. That would have cost another 50 cents. So he took out some of the money and then decided to pull out the rest. But that made two withdrawals on the same day, and that was $1.50.

An estimated 26 million desperately poor rural Chinese are jobless after pinning their hopes on factory jobs that dried up due to the global economic slowdown, an official said Monday, noting that widespread unemployment could threaten the country's social stability. The figures were announced one day after Beijing warned of "possibly the toughest year" since the turn of the century, calling for development of agriculture and rural areas to offset the economic fallout. Though many Chinese cities have seen double-digit growth in recent years, the countryside has lagged far behind, forcing peasants to seek urban factory jobs churning out goods...

On Thursday, the DELEG released the jobless rates for the state's 83 counties, and the numbers continue to shoot higher and higher. The unemployment rate increased in every county in the state.

I don't know if there is already an official Obama Job Loss Count Thread so here goes.Present Obama promised to save or create somewhere between 2.5 million and 7 gazillion jobs. This is a list of job losses announced since Obamalamadingdong took office. Please feel free to add to it as you learn of new layoffs.Pfizer -- 8,000Sprint Nextel -- 8,000Home Depot -- 7,000General Motors -- 2,000Caterpillar -- 5,000Microsoft -- 5,000United Airlines -- 1,000

Larry Summers, the incoming director of the National Economic Council, predicted Sunday that President-elect Obama would keep the unemployment rate below 10 percent. “I think while we’re going to see substantial job losses, frankly what’s important about the president’s program here is that it is going to contain what would otherwise be just a vicious cycle,” Summers said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “People spend less, therefore, others earn less, therefore, they spend less.” Summers said that Obama has received a “terrific response” from Congress on his plan for a massive stimulus to pump money into the economy mainly by...

The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office and California attorney general are investigating whether members of the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board broke conflict-of-interest laws in 2005 when they voted to offer their own chairwoman a job in San Diego. During a closed session on Halloween three years ago, the appeals board offered Cynthia K. Thornton a six-figure job as an unemployment insurance appeals administrative law judge, board minutes show. Three members of that board, including former Democratic Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin, voted to give Thornton the judgeship in San Diego, where she now earns $109,000 hearing claims from workers who say they...

The state's unemployment rate is the highest in 14 years; it rose half a percentage point in October from the month earlier. In the past 12 months, more than 100,000 jobs have been lost. Reporting from Los Angeles and Sacramento — California's unemployment rate soared to a 14-year high in October, hitting 8.2%, and economists predicted that it could rise substantially over the next year and a half. The state's economy shed 26,400 people from its payroll last month, raising the total number of lost jobs to 101,300 since October 2007, the California Employment Development Department reported Friday. And the...

THE HAGUE, 17/07/08 - Five jobless families that were given a free holiday from their municipality have returned prematurely from the outing. One of the reasons was that the camp-site was not found luxurious enough, local newspaper Tubantia reports. The five families with children are unemployed and therefore have little money. Losser municipality offered them the opportunity to stay for free for a week at De Holenberg camp-site in the village of Schaik. Within three days, however, they returned disappointed to Losser. The camp-site did not meet expectations, according to Tubantia. One of the families even phoned the municipality from...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hiring practically stalled in December, driving the nation's unemployment rate up to a two-year high of 5 percent and fanning fears of a recession. Employers last month added the fewest new jobs to their payrolls in more than four years, according to the employment report released Friday by the Labor Department. The report showed that employment conditions are deteriorating, strained by a housing slump and credit crunch that are sapping economic strength. "The economy is getting hit by some body blows. The big question is whether the economy can withstand it or will it take a fall,"...

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Auto and construction job cuts pushed Michigan's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate up to 7.4 percent in August, 0.2 points higher than July's rate, the state announced Wednesday. Michigan's unemployment continued to lead the national rate, which held steady last month at 4.6 percent.

Even with new jobless claims rising last week to their highest level since April, many economists say housing-related job losses may be a lot worse than official data show.First-time claims rose for a fifth straight week to 334,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, as the economy slows from its brisk pace in the second quarter.The four-week average of continuing claims rose to 2.561 million, the most since January 2006.  "Jobless claims drifting up as they have is consistent with a slowdown" in GDP growth in the second half of the year, said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia. The uptrend...

WASHINGTON - Fewer people signed up for jobless benefits last week, an encouraging sign that most businesses aren't resorting to big layoffs amid a housing slump and the painful credit crunch. The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance dipped by 2,000 to 322,000 for the week ending Aug. 18. It marked the first drop in new claims in roughly a month. The showing was a bit higher than the 320,000 analysts were forecasting. Still, the level of claims suggested that the employment climate remains in fairly good shape despite problems in housing, tighter credit, and...

HOUSTON -- Nineteen months after Hurricane Katrina sent evacuees from New Orleans streaming into Houston, more than 5,000 heads of households among them are still unemployed despite the city's booming economy, officials say. The number of jobless is contributing to the sense among some Houston-area residents that the storm's victims are a drain on the city and have worn out their welcome. After the storm, a quarter-million evacuees were brought to Houston, welcomed by Mayor Bill White, who threw open the Astrodome. Even before the storm, many were desperately poor, unemployed and on welfare or food stamps. Many had been...

The nation's unemployment rate edged up to 4.5 percent in April as cautious employers added the fewest new jobs in more than two years, signaling that the labor market is starting to feel some of the strain of the sluggish economy. The fresh employment picture provided by the Labor Department on Friday showed that payrolls grew by just 88,000 last month as job losses spread beyond manufacturing and construction and into retailing and financial services. Workers' paycheck also grew more slowly. The new tally of jobs added to the economy was the fewest since 65,000 jobs in November 2004. The...

Jobless doctors 'to be shipped overseas' By George Jones, Political Editor Last Updated: 2:13am BST 21/04/2007 Up to 10,000 young doctors who are unable to find jobs in the NHS could be offered voluntary work overseas. An estimated 34,250 doctors have applied for just 18,500 training posts According to official documents leaked yesterday, the plan was drawn up by NHS managers following the botched introduction of an online appointments system, which could leave thousands of junior doctors without training places this summer. The document, Maximising Employment Opportunities, confirmed that there was a 10,000 "excess of applicants for training posts over...

America's employers ramped up hiring in March, driving the unemployment rate down to a five-month low of 4.4 %. It was a surprisingly strong performance in an economy that has otherwise shown signs of sluggishness recently.