The Homa Files

Actually, it’s quite simple.

About 155,000 fewer people were employed in July.

But, according to the BLS, the labor force contracted by 422,000 people. 

The bulk of the “contraction” were unemployed people who  “got discouraged that there were no jobs available for them” and stopped looking for work … 

The discouraged “contractors” get dropped from  both the numerator and the denominator of the unemployment rate calculation. 

So, net unemployment increased by 267,000 people  … but the unemployment rate improved from 9.5% to 9.4%.

If the discouraged folks were still looking, the rate would have increased to about 9.6%

Geez.

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Lowlights

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 584,000 over the month to 5.0 million.

1 in 3 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

There were 796,000 discouraged workers in July, up by 335,000 over the past 12 months.

Full BLS Report
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

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This entry was posted on August 10, 2009 at 7:59 am and is filed under Employment - Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.