Nation Adds 117,000 Jobs; Jobless Rate Dips to 9.1 Percent
The nation gained 117,000 jobs in July while the U.S. unemployment rate dropped slightly from 9.2 percent in June to 9.1 percent last month, according to Department of Labor data released this morning. Analysts had predicted jobs would grow by about 90,000 in July.
The unemployment rate has topped 9 percent in 10 of the last 12 months. The decrease in the jobless rate last month was entirely due to the increase in the number of unemployed workers who stopped looking for work and are no longer counted in the government’s figures, says Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Companies hired 154,000 new employees last month while some 37,000 jobs were lost in the public sector. This rate of a rate of job growth “keeps us firmly in low gear and on track for persistent high unemployment,” Shierholz says.
Health care employment continued to grow, adding 31,000 jobs in in July. Manufacturing employment also increased in July by 24,000.
Today’s jobless report shows the U.S. economy is not close to getting back on its feet, says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM).
Job creation is still below a level necessary to bring the unemployment rate down in any substantial way, and the manufacturing index released earlier this week shows that the industry may face some tougher times in the months ahead.
Some 25 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work, and wages are essentially flat. Yet Congress passed a budget bill that did nothing to address the nation’s jobs crisis.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the slwo pace of job creation puts our fragile recovery “in jeopardy of stalling altogether.”
While Congress spent weeks fussing over a politically manufactured debt ceiling crisis, our economy continues to flounder from the jobs crisis. And any Tea Partier or presidential candidate who says this is a reason to further destroy our nation’s safety net should spend some time studying Herbert Hoover.
The American people want their government leaders to focus on jobs. Some 56 percent of those surveyed in a recent poll say Congress and the president should work on jobs this year and 48 percent say those jobs should be in manufacturing.
When asked whether Congress and the president should focus on the federal budget deficit or jobs, 67 percent say jobs, according to the poll conducted by the Mellman Group and Ayres, McHenry & Associates for the AAM.
Meeting this week in Washington, D.C., the AFL-CIO Executive Council announced an America Wants to Work mobilization to
focus on jobs that gives voice to the jobless, including unemployed veterans, students who cannot find meaningful work as they enter the labor force and communities of color that have been especially hard hit by the recession and the refusal of corporate America to invest in job creation.
The mobilization will kick off on Labor Day, building to a National Week of Action in early October that focuses on the demand for good jobs and demonstrates in communities all across the country that America Wants to Work.
College Grads Face Worst Job Market in Years
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Students graduating from college this spring will face the worst job market for graduates since the Great Depression, a new report says. “The Class of 2011: Young Workers Face a Dire Labor Market Without a Safety Net,” by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), found that unemployment among workers between the ages of 16 and 24 is more than double the national average. In 2010, young workers averaged 18.4 percent unemployment, compared with 9.6 percent overall.
The news is worst for young blacks and Hispanics, who are suffering disproportionately. The unemployment rate for black high school graduates under age 25 and not enrolled in school was 31.8 percent last year and stands at 22.8 percent for Hispanic high school graduates and 20.3 percent for white high school graduates. The unemployment rate for young black college graduates was 19 percent compared with 13.8 percent for young Hispanic graduates and 8.4 percent for young white graduates.
Younger high school graduates also are not keeping pace with their older peers. Their 22.5 percent unemployment rate in 2010 is more than double the 10.3 percent rate among high school graduates age 25 and older.
Proposed Ohio, Missouri Laws Lower Wages
A new analysis shows workers in states with laws like those proposed in Ohio and Missouri, which supporters misleadingly call “right to work,” have lower wages, whether they belong to a union or not.
The report, “Compensation Penalty of ‘Right-to-Work’ Laws,” by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economists Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz, finds that wages in those states are 3.2 percent lower than in states without the law.
Workers in states with similar laws also are less likely to have employer-sponsored health insurance and employer-sponsored pensions.
These laws are designed to please the CEOs who contributed generously to the campaigns of the governors and state legislators who are pushing them.
They are a particularly bad idea when the economy is mired in a stagnant recovery, Gould and Shierholz said.
Read the full report here.
Economy Adds Only 39,000 Jobs; Unemployment Rate Jumps to 9.8 Percent
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Today’s news that only 39,000 jobs were created last month lifting the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent should be sounding alarm bells all over Capitol Hill, where congressional Republicans are blocking restoration of unemployment benefits for long-term jobless workers. More than 890,000 people (and counting) have lost their unemployment benefits (UI) since Dec. 1.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said of today’s report:
The disconnect between Washington and working families is dangerous and alarming. We need to get serious about investing in job creation now and we need an immediate, one-year extension of jobless benefits. Without dramatic action to invest in America and create jobs, our economy will not see the robust and sustained recovery we need to put millions of Americans back to work.
Companies Sit on Record Profits While Millions Are Jobless
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While nearly 27 million U.S. workers are either jobless or in need of full-time work, America’s corporations are sitting on record profits that could be used to put people back on the job.
This irony is especially cruel for the 2 million workers who will lose their unemployment benefits by the end of the year because corporate America’s Republican friends in Congress blocked an extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for people who have been jobless for six months or more. (Sign the petition and join online solidarity actions to help long-term unemployed workers—find out more here.
The U.S. Department of Commerce reported last week that American companies just had their best quarter ever, earning profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record—$1.655 trillion—was in the third quarter of 2006. In fact, American corporate profits have grown for seven straight quarters at some of the fastest rates in history.
Labor Day 2010: America’s Workers Losing Ground
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The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) this week published three reports showing the extent to which America’s workers are losing ground this Labor Day: People are dropping out of the workforce because there are no jobs and those workers who have jobs are earning less.
First, there are not nearly enough new jobs. Nearly 15 million workers are unemployed, nearly a quarter of whom have been seeking work for more than a year. Even though unemployment rose slightly to 9.6 percent last month, it’s 0.5 percent less than it was last October. But that’s not because the economy has been generating that many jobs. EPI economist Heidi Shierholz found that the percentage of people who were actually employed held steady even as the population increased. Translation: The improvement in the unemployment rate has been almost entirely due to people dropping out of (or not entering) the labor force because of the lack of jobs. Check out Shierholz’s report, “Employment Growth Continues Subpar Performance,” here.
Jobs Bill Stuck in House, Economists Say UI Is Key to Rebooting Economy
The U.S. House decided not to vote on the jobs bill today—and that’s really bad news for America’s jobless workers, especially the millions of long-term unemployed. They desperately need the jobs bill because it extends unemployment insurance (UI) for those who have been without a job for 26 weeks or longer. And while members of Congress head home for the Memorial Day holiday, they will have to explain to their constituents why they didn’t vote on a bill that would create badly needed jobs—but managed a vote that would give them time-off around the Memorial Day weekend.
Without passage of the bill, more than 8 million people will exhaust their benefits by the end of the year, leaving their families with no money for life’s basic necessities such as food and shelter, Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz predicts.
Economic Crisis Hitting Young Workers Hard
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Since the current recession began in December 2007, some 1.3 million young workers have left the workforce, while the participation rate of workers ages 55 and older increased, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
This means many older workers are not retiring or are re-entering the labor force because they have suffered a sharp decline in retirement security, say authors Kathryn Edwards and Heidi Shierholz.
At the same time, workers ages 16 to 24—who face an unemployment rate of 18.9 percent, compared with 6.8 percent for workers ages 55 and older—are having a hard time finding jobs. Many who do find work end up in low-paying jobs with few or no benefits.
One major benefit that young workers lack is health insurance. One-third of young U.S. adults—nearly 13 million people—had no health insurance coverage in 2008, according to a government report released yesterday. In a survey of more than 9,000 people ages 20 to 29, the National Center for Health Statistics found that 30 percent of young adults had no coverage and were nearly twice as likely as adults ages 30 to 64 to be uninsured.
SAG President Joins AFL-CIO Executive Council
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The AFL-CIO Executive Council today welcomed a new member, Ken Howard, president of the Screen Actors (SAG). Howard, who was elected to lead the actor’s union in September 2009, replaces former SAG President Alan Rosenberg.
Convening for a one-day meeting in Washington, D.C., the council heard from Ron Bloom, senior counselor to President Obama for manufacturing policy and a former staff member at the United Steelworkers (USW). The council and union leaders have repeatedly called on the Obama administration to quickly enact a national industrial policy to foster and sustain growth in the nation’s manufacturing industries. Increasing our manufacturing capacity is critical as the world prepares to move toward a green economy.
Pollster Celinda Lake also shared the results of polling on the economy and the political implications of a protracted jobs crisis.
Unemployment Reaches 26-Year High of 9.7 Percent
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Some 216,000 U.S. jobs were cut in August, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data out today. That worsens the unofficial unemployment rate to 9.7 percent, the highest rate since June 1983. The rate was 9.4 percent in July.
If underemployed workers or those who want a job but have given up looking are counted, the broader U.S. unemployment rate stands at 16.8 percent, up from 16.3 percent last month. That means more than 25 million Americans need jobs or full-time work but cannot find it. Worse yet, there now are 5 million long-term unemployed workers, the worst such figure in any recent recession. That means there were nearly six workers looking for every job available.
The 216,000 job loss is the smallest monthly decline since last year. Employers cut 276,000 jobs in July, compared with an average of 691,000 per month in the first quarter.
There is some good news: The economic recovery package has created about 1.2 million jobs, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Without the stimulus package, the monthly job loss would have been double what it was just six months ago.
