It’s the start of a new month, and that means new unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And once again, they ain’t pretty:
The unemployment rate rose from 9.8 to 10.2 percent in October, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline (-190,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The largest job losses over the month were in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade.
In October, the number of unemployed persons increased by 558,000 to 15.7 million. The unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage point to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has risen by 8.2 million, and the unemployment rate has grown by 5.3 percentage points.
For perspective, 15.7 million unemployed is roughly equivalent to every single adult resident of the states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and Idaho — all of them together — being out of work.
To help the long-term unemployed make it through this crisis, Congress moved yesterday to extend unemployment benefits:
The measure provides up to 14 weeks of additional assistance to unemployed people who have exhausted their state and federal benefits, but up to 20 additional weeks to those in about 26 states with unemployment rates exceeding 8.5 percent. In the past two months, more than 600,000 out-of-work people have exhausted their benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, a liberal advocacy group. The legislation will not restore aid retroactively.
The extension brings maximum state and federal unemployment compensation to 99 weeks, the longest ever, reflecting the severity of a recession that has thrown more people out of work for longer periods than at any other time since collection of such data began six decades ago, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
That’s a good start. But America needs more if we are going to turn around the worst employment crisis this nation has seen since the Great Depression.
Are our leaders listening?