New York SBDC Research Network

Obtained From:   Fortune  The U.S. expansion has put millions of people back to work and economists agree that the economy is now at or close to full employment. But what does that mean exactly? When economists talk about full employment, they don’t mean everybody has a job. And they don’t mean that even the rosiest economic health can cut unemployment to zero. If unemployment falls too much, inflation will rise as employers compete to hire workers and push up wages too fast. To economists, full employment means that unemployment has fallen to the lowest possible level that won’t cause inflation. In the U.S., that was thought to be a jobless rate of about 5 percent — above the February rate of 4.1 percent. Is higher inflation therefore on the way? Or is full employment a smaller number than economists supposed?

From ThomasNet : After holding steady at 3.9% for March and April, the unemployment rate for manufacturing declined to 3.2% in May – its lowest point since June 2000. Meanwhile, the 0.7 percentage-point drop represents the largest improvement in the unemployment rate since June 2016, when the unemployment rate fell a full percentage point, from 4.7% to 3.7%. The number of unemployed persons within the industry fell from 620,000 to 504,000 – the lowest it has been since at least 2000. However, the number of people employed within the industry fell by 1,000 workers. Many durable goods sectors experienced job growth in May, including the Machinery sector, which added 3,700 new jobs – the most of any sector in the industry.

This bulletin presents 2011 annual averages from the Current Population Survey for census regions and divisions; the 50 states and the District of Columbia; and 54 large metropolitan areas, 22 metropolitan divisions, and 41 principal cities. Data from the CPS differ from the official estimates produced by the individual states through the LAUS program. CPS estimates are provided herein because they are a current source of information on the demographic and economic characteristics of the labor force in subnational areas, from the same source as the official labor force data for the United States as a whole.

Labor Force Characteristics by Race and Ethnicity, 2011 In 2011, the unemployment rate for the United States averaged 8.9 percent, but varied across race and ethnicity groups. The rates were highest for Blacks (15.8 percent) and for American Indians and Alaska Natives (14.6 percent) and lowest for Whites (7.9 percent) and for Asians (7.0 percent). The jobless rate was 13.6 percent for persons of two or more races, 11.5 percent for Hispanics, and 10.4 percent for Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders. WORKER DISPLACEMENT: 2009-2011 From January 2009 through December 2011, 6.1 million workers were displaced from jobs they had held for at least 3 years, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was down from 6.9 million for the survey period covering January 2007 to December 2009. In January 2012, 56 percent of workers displaced from 2009-11 were reemployed, up by 7 percentage points from the prior survey in January 2010.

Source: Congressional Research Service, via Federation of American Scientists A persistently high unemployment rate is of concern to Congress for a variety of reasons, including its negative consequences for the economic well-being of individuals and its impact on the federal budget (i.e., deficit growth due to lower revenue and higher expenditures). The unemployment rate was 9.5% when the economy emerged from the 11th postwar recession in June 2009. It climbed further to peak at 10.1% in October 2009. The rate then slowly declined before stalling at about 9.0% for most of 2011. Although the unemployment rate has resumed its decline, at slightly above 8.0% in early 2012, it remains at an historically high level. The slow rebound of the labor market has prompted calls for new measures to stimulate economic growth to avoid a so-called double-dip recession, such as occurred during the early 1980s. The economy contracted in July 1981, 12 months into the recovery from the Januar...

by Isabella Woods Employment levels have increased slightly according to Bureau of Labor Statistics released last month. The month of September saw an increase of 103,000 in the number of people employed, slightly higher than the monthly average for April-September which stands at 72,000. However, the increase should not be seen to hide the more complex employment picture. Nearly half of the 103,000 increase can be accounted for by 45,000 telecommunications workers returning to their posts after a strike took them off the employment total for August. The total unemployment figure is largely unchanged by the increase in employment, standing at 14 million. The overall unemployment rate is 9.1%. Since April, the unemployment rate has remained stable, varying only between 9.0% and 9.2%. Beneath the headline figures, we can see a difference in the fortunes of different industries. Reflecting tightened budgets, there was a fall in the number of government jobs of 34,000. Retail and ma...

The national unemployment rate rose to 7.2% in December, reaching a sixteen year high with over 11 million Americans unemployed. The New York Times published an article today that predicts that the "rapidly deteriorating economy promised more significant losses in the months ahead". According to information released today by the U.S. Labor Department, 2.6 millions jobs were lost in 2008, the most since 1945 when 2.8 millions jobs were lost. To find statistics on the unemployment rate for previous years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides Labor Force Statistics in graph form.