UNEMPLOYMENT RATE DROPS TO 9 %

From HotAir.com

Unemployment dropped a tenth of a point in October but the number of jobs added provided less than needed for population growth, according to the latest report from the BLS:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up in October (+80,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment in the private sector rose, with modest job growth continuing in professional and businesses services, leisure and hospitality, health care, and mining. Government employment continued to trend down. …
Total nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up in October (+80,000). Over the past 12 months, payroll employment has increased by an average of 125,000 per month. In October, private-sector employment increased by 104,000, with continued job growth in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, health care, and mining. Government employment continued to contract in October.

Analysts expected an overall job growth number around 95,000, so this falls short of predictions. Even with just the private-sector growth taken into consideration, the number isn’t enough to keep up with population growth. I suspect the topline number fell because the workforce may still be shrinking, although the civilian participation rate and employment-population ratios remained the same as last month.
Looking a little deeper into the year-on-year numbers for people not in the work force (and therefore not counted in the jobless rate), those numbers (not seasonally adjusted) increased from October 2010, from 84.878 million to 86.181 million.  People who want work but remain outside the labor force rose from 5.867 million to 5.969 million, although the category of “discouraged workers” dropped from 1.219 million to 967,000.  The seasonally-adjusted numbers show a one-month increase in people who want a job but don’t have one from 6.241 million to 6.403 million — a bad sign after last month’s decrease in this figure.

Since unemployment dropped you get a GregALogue!