Friday, October 3, 2008

159,000 jobs lost; 2.2 million jobs lost the past year

The unemployment rate stays steady at 6.1%, but the U-6 rates goes up from 10.7% to 11%.

Here's the note on the marginally attached, which makes up an additional 5% of the unemployed that is not counted by BLS statistical methodology.

About 1.6 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in September, 336,000 more than 12 months earlier. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They are not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 467,000 discouraged workers in September; the number of discouraged workers has increased by 191,000 from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work specifically because they believe no jobs are available for them. The other 1.1 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in September had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

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