APRIL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AT 5%

Friday, May 2, 2008

(PAI)APRIL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AT 5%

WASHINGTON (PAI)--The nation’s unemployment rate fell
by 0.1% in April to 5%, the Bureau of labor Statistics
reported. The number of unemployed fell by 189,000,
to 7.626 million people. A separate survey showed
businesses shed 20,000 jobs last month, on top of
232,000 in the first three months of 2008.

The data shows 1.676 million more people were jobless
in April than when GOPer George W. Bush entered the
Oval Office in Jan. 2001. That month, the last
figures gathered under Democratic President Bill
Clinton, there were 5.956 million jobless and the
unemployment rate was 4%.

And as you delve deeper you go into the BLS data, more
bad numbers appear:

* Three of every eight jobless in April were
permanently laid off, down slightly from the four in
every ten who reported in March that they were on
permanent layoff..

* Factories continued their 8-year slide in jobs,
shedding another 46,000 jobs, 13.596 million on a
seasonally adjusted basis. Factories have lost 3.3
million jobs since 1999, many of them due to
subsidized foreign imports and half—according to the
AFL-CIO Industrial Unions Council, well-paying union
jobs. About 40% of the April factory losses were in
auto and auto parts plants.

* For the fourth straight month, at least,
construction also shed jobs, joining the factories.
The industry lost 61,000 jobs last month and 1457,000
since its peak last September. The jobless rate for
construction workers was 11.3% in April, far above the
7.9% unemployment they suffered in April 2007.

* Long-term joblessness stayed high in April, with
34.5% of the jobless out of work at least 15 weeks.
And 17.8% of all jobless have been out at least six
months, BLS said. That’s a 0.9% increase in one
month. Those workers have exhausted their
unemployment benefits. But bowing to pressure from
anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, the
Democratic-run Congress--rejecting labor’s
lobbying--refused to extend jobless benefits to 39
weeks in a “stimulus” package it approved earlier in
2008.

Union and congressional leaders, however, have agreed
on the outlines of a second stimulus package, with an
unemployment benefits extension as its centerpiece.

* Adding together the jobless, those forced to work
part-time when they really want full-time work and
discouraged workers who have stopped job-hunting, one
of every 11 workers was unemployed or underemployed.
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