JOBLESS RATE LEAPS TO 7.2%; 11.1 MILLION NOW UNEMPLOYED

Friday, January 9, 2009

(PAI)

JOBLESS RATE LEAPS TO 7.2%; 11.1 MILLION NOW UNEMPLOYED
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)—The nation’s unemployment rate leaped by 0.4% in December, finishing 2008 at 7.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. The number of jobless workers rose by 632,000, to 11.108 million, while a separate survey showed businesses shed 524,000 jobs in one month.

The dismal figures showed the second Bush crash is far worse than the first, and the worst since the Reagan recession of 1981-82. President-elect Barack Obama (D) used the numbers to argue that without immediate congressional passage of a huge economic stimulus bill he is crafting, the jobless rate could rise into double-digit territory – and stay there.

The figures under Bush contrast with those he inherited when he took office in Jan. 2001. That month, in the last unemployment figures gathered under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the jobless rate was 4% and there were 5.956 million unemployed. Now the rate is 80% higher and the number of jobless is up by 86.5%.

There were job losses across the board. Factories’ long slide in jobs sped up in December, as they shed 149,000 workers, and slid below 13 million overall, to 12.98 million. Almost 4 million factory workers have lost their jobs since 1999, and half of them are well-paying union jobs, says the AFL-CIO Industrial Unions Council. Most of the losses are due to subsidized foreign imports, it adds.

Construction shed another 101,000 jobs in December, down to 6.833 million. The number of unemployed construction workers is 1.522 million and the sector’s jobless rate is 15.9%.

Even service-providing industries lost jobs, except for health care. It added 22,000 jobs, but services as a whole shed 273,000, BLS added.

And workers without jobs are without them for longer time frames. The agency said 40.4% of all unemployed workers in December had been jobless at least 15 weeks, and 23.2% had been jobless for at least half a year. In December, 2007, the month economists say the latest Bush crash started, one-third of workers were jobless for at least four months and 17.5% were out for at least 27 weeks.

A higher share of workers is also toiling in part-time jobs even when they want full-time work. In December, there were 8 million such involuntary part-timers, 3.4 million more than a year before. And overall share of unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers was 13.5% -- one of every 7.4. That’s up 0.9% in one month, and almost 5 percentage points from Dec. 2007. ###