Friday, March 4, 2011

UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS TO 8.9%

The press release:


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.)

The always insightful Ed Morrissey

The addition of 192,000 jobs is a good sign.  We need to add somewhere between 100k-125K jobs each month to keep up with population growth in the nation, and this is one of the few months in the last three years to exceed that level.  But while it’s a good month in that sense, we need the economy to add somewhere between 400k-500k jobs each month if we are to make a serious dent in the levels of unemployment and underemployment.  The number of those marginally attached to the labor force — in other words, not looking for work — increased by 200,000 over last February, and the number of those who currently want a job but don’t have one went up by over 300,000 in the same period.
As promised when the unemployment rate goes down you get a Gregalouge.

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