Unemployment Situation, November 2008
The news was worse than expected:
Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply (-533,000) in November, and
the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. November’s
drop in payroll employment followed declines of 403,000 in September and
320,000 in October, as revised. Job losses were large and widespread
across the major industry sectors in November.
There are other less-than-heartening numbers in this report - the long term unemployed and the involuntary part-timers:
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was
little changed at 2.2 million in November, but was up by 822,000 over the past
12 months.Over the month, the number of persons who worked part time for economic
reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) continued
to increase, reaching 7.3 million. The number of such workers rose by 2.8
million over the past 12 months. This category includes persons who would
like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had
been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.
