American Economy,  Unemployment Rate

U.S. Employment Rate Drops to 8.9%, 192,000 Jobs Added – Spinning the Numbers?

6xgjxgzyxeym7aup4ygxg24 Poll Watch: U.S. Unemployment Increases to 10.3% in February   Jobs Situation Worsens

My read on the economy is not as optimistic as the unemployment numbers which came out of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics today. I mean, look at Gallup’s numbers that I posted just the other day above.

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in manufacturing, construction, professional and business services, health care, and transportation and warehousing.

The number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) and the unemployment rate (8.9 percent) changed little in February. The labor force was about unchanged over the month. The jobless rate was down by 0.9 percentage point since November 2010. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (8.7 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (23.9 percent), whites (8.0 percent), blacks (15.3 percent), and Hispanics (11.6 percent) showed little or no change in February. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, at 8.3 million, continued to trend down in February and has fallen by 1.2 million over the past 12 months. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was 6.0 million and accounted for 43.9 percent of the unemployed. (See tables A-11 and A-12.)

Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the employ- ment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, were unchanged in February. (See table A-1.) The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.3 million in February. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.)

In February, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.0 million discouraged workers in February, a decrease of 184,000 from a year earlier. (These data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.7 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in February had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)

Any improvement is good but the numbers, while the MSM spins them to support the Obama administration and the GOP spinners take credit for their policy changes in the Congress, are still dire.

The number of unemployed people dipped to 13.7 million, still nearly double the number before the recession began in December 2007.

This report while encouraging should be read with a grain of salt.

To cut that in half at this rate (or just to take off 6.5 million), assuming 100K each month to keep up with population growth, we would need 71 months to get unemployment back to its pre-recession level.  And we would need that on a consistent basis, not 36K one month and 192K the next.

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