The unemployment rate seems to lag (for whatever reason) the number of jobs created, by a couple of months.
It increased, for instance, back in the month where there were 300,000 jobs "created".
BTW, I've read where the real rate is around 9% if you count it the same way they counted in the 60s. They changed the way it was figured in the 90s.
The rate near 9% is the "U6" unemployment rate, and that was never used as the official rate. The rate we use is the U3 rate which declined to 5.5% today.
It is interesting to note that the U6 rate was 9.7% in July 1996, and it is 9.5% today.
I don't know if it would be fair to do that. There was a lot less women in the workforce in the 60s.
The unemployment rate indicates the number of people looking for jobs, not the number of those without work. Once you stop looking, you are no longer considered "unemployed". So, when the economy begins to grow, more folks without work begin to look for it, leading to a potential jump in the unemployment rate.
I'm not an economist, but I have read somewhere that the methodology used to provide the unemployment rate was established back in the days when the economy was largely industrial output/ factory oriented and thus statistics are collected only from companies where there is a separation of employer/employee type arrangement. It does not collect data on people who leave this kind of work force to start their own service based businesses - a sector which is becoming more and more important as we move from a production based to a knowledge based economy. Therefore, the people self employed in the "knowledge" based industries are not factored in to current stats which distorts the true employment picture more and more as time goes on.
It's called U6, I think.